The Day Time Ran Out Read online

The Day Time Ran out

  unabridged updated version

  Darrel Bird

  Copyright 2010 by Darrel Bird

  And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. Revelation 6:8

  Atlanta burning

  At the CDC Atlanta Dr. Vernon Sedgwick hooked the air supply hose into his bio suit and opened the door of the level 5 bio containment where a fresh slide of the virus lay ready.

  He nimbly moved manipulator control then gave the glass slide a final bump as it slid under the electron microscope.

  Although the germ was small it couldn’t hide from the best microscope in the world. “No Sir my tiny friend, you cannot hide your face from me no matter how small you are. Come to poppa now and don’t be shy.”

  He began adjusting the microscope a micro meter at a time and as the dimness cleared a shining metallic like figure came into view. He stared at what had already killed half of Atlanta. The virus resembled a vortex, so unlike the Ebola virus which killed quickly enough, but this thing was twice as deadly.

  He jumped when the virus he thought was dead exploded into a fireworks of color then settled back down, only this time it was larger and more ugly. Fear like he had never known filled his gut.

  “Lacy…Lacy!

  “Yes doctor Sedgwick?”

  “I thought you said you treated this virus before it was handed off to me?”

  “Yes sir…it was.”

  “Then why is it still alive?”

  The slender good looking woman on the other side of the inch thick glass stared at him for a moment.

  “We did treat the virus Doctor, you know I don’t guess at those kinds of things, that’s why I work in level 5.

  “Well…never mind it’s just as good, get suited up and come in here.”

  “Doctor, you know the two of us are not supposed to be in there at one time, it’s the rules!”

  “Well to hell with the rules, just get your pretty ass in here; the rule makers are mostly dead!”

  The 29 year old graduate of Nova South Eastern and Cal-tec donned the bio suit quickly and stepped through the airlock door as it slid behind her and sealed.

  “What are you so excited about?”

  “This…take a look at this.”

  He readjusted the microscope until the vortex virus was again clear; she stared at it a minute then jumped back as it bloomed again like a beautiful but deadly flower.

  “Oh God!

  As she stared into the microscope he reached over and hit the button that would seal their fate. She did not hear as the oiled 2 inch bolts in the door slid softly closed.

  He reached into a drawer and as she stared at the image he put the gun close to her temple, just touching her bio suit and pulled the trigger, then he aimed the gun at his own head and pulled it again.

  The first time Atlanta burned was during the civil war, the second time it burned was when the war against a man made virus was lost and Atlanta would never burn again.

  The bio suited bodies of Dr. Lacy Miller and Dr. Vernon Sedgwick would watch over the bio containment level 5 long after the suits finally rotted off heir bones and blank eye sockets as a testimony to what man could do to himself. They would stay a hundred feet under ground while Atlanta sank into oblivion.

  The virus hunter

  Iris Pritcherd had worked for W.H.O since college, and was presently attached to the Atlanta Center for Disease Control when the call came in from Chicago that people were sick with a virus the doctors didn't recognize. The CDC told her to take Fred Limpkin, and go see. That suited her fine as she was madly in love with Fred Limpkin. At the CDC they called him 'The Lumpkin.' That bothered Iris not at all because he was a handsome catch with a good personality.

  A virus didn't worry Iris, because she had chased virus's all over the wide world, and came out unscathed. She had returned from Africa the month before, tired, lonely, and looking for something different than poorly built, poorly furnished outback bush hospitals.

  Dr. Lyle Richards, also of W.H.O took her arm at the airport, “When you get there, and find out what's what, report in immediately, it's probably nothing those hick doctors can't fix by themselves, but we get paid for the routine.”

  “Yes doctor.” She said, but her thoughts were asshole as she followed Fred through the gate to board the plane. She didn't like Richards because he treated her as if she didn't know what a virus was. As she walked down the covered ramp to the plane she remembered Africa, where all the interesting stuff was. She had hoofed it through jungles to find the first victims of some real nasty stuff such as Ebola.

  After they were in the air she laid her hand on Fred's leg and squeezed, “What say we take a little me time when we land? A day won't hurt.”

  “They told us to go directly to Chicago Medical Center didn't they?”

  “Well for cripes sake Fred, if you don't want me just say so!”

  “I didn't mean that Iris, of course I want you.” The sex is too good to pass up flashed across his mind like a rock skipping across a pond. He looked sideways at her out of the corner of his eye as if she could detect his thoughts. Of course she didn't know that he was using her just for the sex. He knew the women they worked with laughed at her behind her back, because they knew him as the biggest woman chaser in Atlanta.

  “Lets just both turn off the phone, and have some fun for once.”

  “Ok, I'm for that.” Fred returned.

  They got a hotel room in down town Chicago Tuesday at six pm, and slept late the next day. They didn't emerge from the hotel room until Thursday morning at nine AM. They caught a cab to Chicago Med holding hands with Fred thinking, Thats the best time I've had in years, she is like a teenager!

  As soon as they walked up to the front desk they knew immediately that something was terribly wrong, and instinctively realized their mistake, because the hospital was swarming with sweating doctors and nurse's, and there were beds in the hallways almost out to the front desk.

  The woman answering the phones hardly looked up as they announced who they were, she just slung her head at the hallway, and continued talking on the phone. They walked slowly toward the hallway when they spied a doctor, “We are here to see Dr. Johnson?”

  “Second floor, take a left and down the hallway... last room on the left.”

  They made their way between the beds, found the elevator which took a full eight minutes to make its way to the ground floor. Three nurses took the elevator with them and they saw fear in the eyes of those nurses. There were beds in the hallways of the second floor too as they made their way to Johnson's office and knocked.

  “What, What?” They heard someone yell on the other side of the door. Iris pushed the door open to find Dr. Johnson on the phone, “Well get me someone in Atlanta!” He screamed and slammed the phone down, “What the hell do you two want?” He said glaring at each of them.

  “I'm Dr. Iris Pritcherd from Atlanta.”

  “Where the hell have you two been? We've got a pandemic going on here!”

  “We came as soon as we could.” She lied.

  He tossed a piece of film with a picture of the virus, “We don't know what this thing is, and we think the incubation period is twenty four hours.”

  “But that's almost impossible Dr.” She had looked at thousands of viruses and this resembled none of them.

  “Yeah well if you don't believe me the hallways are full of specimens, with fresh coming in all the time.”

  “But, we need to find the original carrier to isolate the virus Doctor, that's our job.”

>   “No way in hell to do that, a third of Chicago has it.” Iris looked doubtful at the doctor.

  “Go down to the front desk and interview, and at least you can determine the approximate time of incubation until death.” He sighed. “I have to get back to work.”

  Incubation until death? Her mind was whirring, and she had forgotten all about Fred. He followed her along like a lost puppy. He already knew he was in trouble, because he had skipped all the serious diseases, and bluffed his way along for years. Iris was the brightest star in his heavens.

  At the front desk she caught hold of a nurses sleeve, and explained who she was. The nurse looked relieved, and took her to a young girl of about seventeen. Iris began to question the girl to determine when she got sick.

  “I got sick yesterday about four PM, and I came to the hospital last night about midnight. Do you know what is wrong with me?”

  “Probably just a bad case of the flu dear.” But she knew she was lying through her teeth. She stayed with the girl until she took her last breath at five thirty that evening.

  “Lets get out of here Fred, there's nothing we can do here.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Back to the hotel. I've got to get some sleep, I'm aching all over from the trip, and from rutting with you.” She looked at him accusingly.

  “That was your idea.” He reminded her.

 

  They were able to catch a cab back to the hotel. She called Atlanta when she got up to the room, “We know.” Atlanta said. What Atlanta CDC didn't tell her was that they got the information from Los Angles Mercy hospital. By eight that morning Atlanta had written them both off as being useful.

  By the next morning they were both aching and feverish. That afternoon they made feverish love, laid back sated, sick, and would be dead by eight that evening. Two days later the hotel burned down, and there was no trace of them existed any more.

  Before Dr. Johnson died he would have said, “At least they got a little time to themselves.” Because Dr. Johnson was a kind man to really did care for people of all ilk.

 

  The Road

  Virgil and Jan Grissom were just a normal couple, living in upper end of Beverly Hills. They weren’t part of the show crowd. Virgil had an auto repair shop, and Jan was a dental assistant at the local dental clinic. They did pretty well for themselves, just living their lives before the day.

  They still remembered the hell-fire and brimstone preacher who had come on television, stomping around on the stage and warning about the things to come, but they didn’t believe him. He had made his way out of the missions to Costa Mesa, where they had some sort of Christian televised show that ran 24 hours a day. This preacher was sort of weird, and sounded like he was from the south. It was entertaining when he got really lathered up; he would yell and scream about something called the great tribulation.

  Turns out the crazy sucker wasn’t so crazy after all, because in one short month, everything went from business as usual to hell in a hand basket, right after he preached his best sermon yet. Virgil and Jan sat on the couch that Sunday morning, eating popcorn and having a good old time watching him stomp and yell and wipe sweat off his face, while spit was flying everywhere. They laughed until they hurt. It was one month before the day that the preacher preached his last sermon down in Costa Mesa. The TV station closed the day after he preached it, and they must have all gone home.

  Virgil had just gotten a contract to take care of a fleet of cars for the Hollywood crowd, and they were in the dough. It looked good as far ahead as they could see, until the day some Muslims stepped off a plane in Chicago with a load of a brand new blood-sucking germs with an 80% kill ratio. The rag heads didn’t get far, after they broke the beakers, before they were dead too, was Virgil’s thought on it, but it didn’t change a thing just because they were dead. The germs killed quickly and painfully. Filthy looking sores broke out on people, and they were dropping like rocks.

  Other planes landed in New York, Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Orlando, and the world as they knew it ground to a halt inside of a week and a half. The plague spread like wildfire blown before the winds of high speed travel. People rushed to the hospitals and killed the doctors and nurses and the people in the hospitals with what they brought with them. The ones who were just getting well got sick all over again; only this time they didn’t survive. The germs quickly made their way to the CDC, and killed the workers by the droves. People fled from the cities to the farm land, only to kill the farmers. The truck drivers with their loads of freight died en route to the cities, and the trucks rolled to a halt on the freeways and the interchanges.

  Some fell dead with heart attacks as they saw the waves of death coming at them from every direction. Some sat and hugged their money to their chest, just in case it would buy them a day or two. It didn’t. The grocery stores ran out of food in a day; the gas ran out next. They guarded the hospitals with automatic weapons, and killed anyone who tried to break through the lines; yet it wasn’t nearly enough. The National Guardsmen died too, with their weapons in their hands.

  The wheels of the industrial nations quickly came to a stop, and the Bedouins died in their tents in the desert. The gray horseman galloped back and fourth across the land, his steed rearing and pawing the air, a hideous smile on his face. As he rode to and fro across the earth, hell followed after him.

  Los Angeles quickly became unsafe for the few survivors to come out of their houses. The wicked became more wicked, and they had the run of the gun shops. They had all the weed and dope they could smoke and shoot up their nose, and they killed for the sake of killing. They would kill a man for a dime, when they could get money for free just by walking into the stores and banks.

  So far, the germs hadn’t touched the Grissoms, or they were some of the lucky ones who were immune to this thing; only time would tell. They kept hoping things would get better, so they holed up. But they stayed too long, as most other people did. Finally, the city water ran out, and it was time to go. The other survivors must have realized the same thing, because it was as if a message was sent along an invisible wire, “Get out of Dodge, and do it now.”

  “Virgil! What are you doing?”

  “Just a minute, will ya?”

  Virgil took one last look around the house, slammed the door, walked outside on the lawn and looked at the shop his father had built for him, then back at the neat ranch style stucco house.

  He looked on past the house to the oak studded hills where he had carefully removed the underbrush so that forest fires could not overrun his house and shop buildings. The repair shop had only six bays, but it had furnished them a living.

  Sorry I have to leave it Dad. The thoughts of his father saddened him; he had been a good father, a kind father who listened.

  He walked to the loaded four wheel drive Land Rover. They were going to try to make it out of Beverly Hills by way of the Tujunga Canyon road, and then up over the hump and down to the interstate 5 after they cleared the Grayson Ranch, which lay atop of the mountain. His brother-in-law lived just outside of Porterville, and he had advised them to come on up, but Virgil was afraid they had stayed too long in the Los Angeles basin.

  They wouldn’t be able to get over the freeway that led out of Los Angeles; it was too clogged with wrecks and desperate people with guns who wanted anything that rolled. Virgil had made a trial run the day before, and it was just impossible. His only hope was to catch the freeway at Castaic junction, and then head north. In order to do that, they would have to make their way through Burbank over the back roads. He figured the roads would be somewhat clear past Castaic.

  Anyway, they couldn’t stay here, and perhaps there was food or fuel in the San Joaquin valley. There was food in the houses along the way, but no one dared to go foraging in them, because before the people at the CDC croaked, they had warned the people of the rampant disease that would be fermenting in houses with dead bodies soaking in the heat.

 
Virgil got behind the wheel and started the big Land Rover. He had the car behind their house for the last fifteen years. He had overhauled the engine and the transmission, intending on restoring the vehicle completely. On a whim last spring he had completed the job. Now he was glad he did, because if anything could make it over those roads, the Land Rover could.

  Jan looked across the seat at him with fear in her eyes. She didn’t want to leave the house at first; she just couldn’t get it through her head that this had happened, and that her comfortable world was gone so quickly. She longed for the hair parlors and the Bunco dice games once a week with the girls. Now everything was a mess. Her hair wasn’t professionally done, and she was mad as hell at anything she felt took away her comforts.

  She was skinny, black haired, with a pretty face and cute turned-up nose, and it was love at first sight. He had met her at his high school basketball game. They had gotten married after high school and settled down in the quiet North Hollywood neighborhood where his father had built the garage for him.

  Now it was all gone. Almost every one of their neighbors had died in the first week of the epidemic. Virgil wondered how or why they both had not died with them.

  “You ready honey?”

  “Yeah…Virgil, do you think we can make it to John and Nell’s place?”

  “I don’t know, Jan, but if anything can make it, this old Land Rover will.”

  “I gave you a hard time about this thing lying in the back yard all those years. I’m sorry, Virgil.”

  “It’s ok, honey. I know it was an eyesore, but it was my dad's car, and I just couldn’t part with it after he passed away. Fasten your seat belt; here we go.”

  The car shifted smoothly as they pulled out onto the street and headed toward the Tujunga Canyon road. The scene was surreal. Beside him lay two pump shot guns, and a 357 Magnum was in a holster he had on his gun belt. It was a German-made replica of the Colt 45 revolver some guy had given him to fix his car, along with the western type gun belt. He had hung the pistol in the closet, only to practice with it from time to time up in the hills behind the house. He had gotten fairly good at hitting what he aimed at with the thing.

  “You look like a cowboy with that thing strapped on.” She smiled at him out of her hazel eyes. “The girls better let you alone.”

  “I can handle all the girls who come my way.” He winked at her.

  When they got into the canyon, about a quarter mile up, they rounded a bend, and came upon a large German Shepard dog eating at a dead body. The dog growled and snarled at them as they gently skirted the body. Virgil saw his wife cover her eyes as they passed the ugly scene.

  All of a sudden he remembered the sinner man lyrics.

  Oh Sinnerman, where you gonna run to?

  Sinnerman, where you gonna run to?

  Where you gonna run to?

  All on that day

  He laughed, You got that right, the song fits, but I’m gonna run anyhow, I got no other choice. He looked sheepishly over at his wife, but her attention was on the narrow road.

  The road snaked ahead through the hills that were choked with oak and underbrush on the left side and the canyon on the right that was equally choked with trees and underbrush.

 

  They had gone maybe another half mile when they came to a stalled Arrowhead water truck that was cross ways in the narrow road. No one was in the truck. Virgil got out and began to take out a tow chain he had stowed in the back of the Land Rover. He hooked the chain to the truck and walked back to the Land Rover. A man and a woman roared up on two Harleys, and stopped about 50 feet away.

  Pot shots and lions

  Zack and Rosy Taylor had a pretty good life together until people began to get sick. They owned a small one bedroom house that had a three car garage out back. They lived ten minutes away from Disney Land on a quiet street in Anaheim California. They belonged to a small Harley motorcycle club, and when they went on long rides with the club they were generally in the saddle from early morning until late evening.

  After work at the construction company where he was foreman, he worked on both their bikes, and those of a few friends from the club. When people began to get sick the news media said it was a strong strain of the flu, and he believed them for a while, until a weekend came and the club of 13 riders left to get on the 605 freeway to ride to the hills for a day of riding the twisties.

  Right away they began noticing cars parked on the shoulders of the road with no police out writing tickets. As he was the leader for the day he looked through his rear view mirror and saw the bikers staring at the cars.

  When they came to an over pass there was a car with a person in it with his head leaning against the driver side window. He gradually slowed to stop beside the car. He waved at the others to stay on their bikes, and he walked over to knock on the window. He saw no movement, and he opened the door. He caught the man before he fell to the pavement, and he could see the man was dead. One of the bikers walked up behind him, “What the hell? Is he dead?”

  “Yeah, he's dead alright. Looks like he's been dead a while.”

  “Where's the police at Zack?”

  “I don't know Boyd, how am I supposed to know that?”

  “I don't like the general looks of the whole world.” Another biker said as he hawked a loogy on the pavement.”

  “Geez that's nasty Spike, do you have to do that here?” Rosy looked at the brother in disgust.

  “Sorry Rosy, I guess I'm coming down with a cold.”

  By that time the whole group was standing staring at the dead man. Rosy slipped her hand in his, “Poor man.” She said in a low voice barely above a whisper. Rosy was so short he had to talk to the top of her head if she wasn't looking directly up at him.

  “Rosy, I don't think we better ride today, lets get on the over pass and split back for home.” He turned to the others, “Me and Rosy are going back home but before we go home we'll stop at the Memorial hospital to try to get some information. Its just three blocks off the freeway.”

  “Ok, call us if you find out anything.” Boyd said, and they began to climb back on their bikes. When they came to the hospital exit the group waved back as they motored on down the freeway.

  Zack pulled his bike as close to the front entrance of the hospital as possible, but the parking lot was filled to overflowing. “Stay here Rosy, while I go check with the desk.”

  “No, I'm going with you.”

  He knew it would do no good to argue as they had been married ten years, and she was a spitfire, “Rosy, I don't know what I would do without you.”

  “I don't know what you would do without me either, you big lug.” She smiled up at him. When they got near the entrance they saw the two soldiers with M-16's at the ready. He walked up to one of the soldiers who looked at him with cold eyes, “What's going on here?”

  “Theres no room in the hospital, are you sick?” The soldier looked up at Zack and took an instant liking to him.

  “No, I'm just trying to get information.”

  “My advice to you is to go home and stay there, my partner had to kill a man this morning who tried to break through.”

  “That bad huh?”

  “Yeah, that bad.” He whispered, “My partner and I have been thinking we'll bug out in about an hour after the captain comes by, then they'll overrun this place like a steam roller running over dog crap. We got folks too ya know.”

  “Ok, well...good luck soldier, you guys always been on my like list.”

  “Good luck to you man.” The soldier reached out his hand, and they shook hands. The soldiers hand seemed to linger a minute before he withdrew it ,and Zack could see the wheels turning in the mans head.

  “Lets go Rosy, there's nothing here.”

  Back at home they sat and talked about an hour about what they had seen, then they heard a pop down the street, and then another one, “That was a pistol Rosy.” He got up off the couch and went to the bedroom to retrieve his forty five auto
off the top shelf of the closet. He threaded the holster onto his belt and holstered the weapon.

  “Is that necessary Zack?”

  “I don't know Rosy, looks that way though.”

  “Whatever you say Zack.” He handed her his snub nosed thirty eight.

  “Don't you even take out the garbage without this.”

  “The garbage is your job.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Uhuh.”

  They had plenty of food, and Zack always kept plenty of water bottles stacked in the garage for when the club came over, but the gun shots came more often as the week passed into the next. They kept tabs on the rest of the club members by phone until the phones went dead, then it became too dangerous for Zack to ride to check on the club members. Nine of the club members had already died or left town, he didn't know which. Boyd came to their house once, but never came again.

  “I wonder how Bill and Linda are?” Rosy said.

  “I just don't know honey. If you want I'll try taking a run to their house.”

  “No, we have to think of our own safety. Zack, I don't think we are going to be able to stay here much longer.”

  “I've been thinking the same thing babe. I've been installing an extra small gas tank on the bikes, I'll have it done by tomorrow. I installed them in the fiberglass saddle bags. It'll give us an extra two gallons if we have to hit the road.

  That evening as Rosy was taking a shower the water stopped running, “Zack! The waters off damn it!”

  Zack walked into the bathroom with a slim plastic bucket and opened the back of the commode, “Ok, stand there and I'll rinse you off.”

  “Thats cold Zack!” Rosy exclaimed as he began to pour water over her head.

  “Do you want the soap?”

  “Don't be a smart ass, just pour.”

  She stood there shivering as he wrapped a towel around her shoulders, “Want to make out?”

  “You would say that at a time like this...Zack, it's time to go isn't it?”

  “It was time to go the day we were going for a ride, and found a dead body on the 605 freeway. Amazing how we get so attached to one place.”

  “Thats ok, I am glad we stayed. This was our first home together. I love you so much Zack.”

  “You know how much I love you Rosy.”

  “Yeah, but you better not stop telling me. A woman has to hear it.”

  “We'll sleep in our bed tonight, and pack the bikes at dawn. We need to be on the 605 by seven.”

  Zack was up before dawn with a flash light in his hand packing the bikes. It was good daylight when he went in to wake his wife, “Get up honey, time to go, I have everything on the bikes.”

  She was instantly awake, “You should of woke me.”

  “I wanted to let you rest as long as you could. It will be a long day, I have us a bowl of fruit on the table. The coffee is made too.”

  “You're such a hero.”

  “You may not think so before this day is out.”

  The air off the ocean had a slight chill to it as the Harley's grunted to life, “Stay right behind me, but stay in my rear view.”

  “Ok.” She let out the clutch a little on the big Harley and inched it forward. He let out his own clutch and they were moving. The morning seemed peaceful, but for the junk scattered in the streets and in front of some of the houses. There was broken front windows in some of them, and it reminded them that this was not a normal day in L.A.

  They reached the 605 freeway on ramp and turned north, but before they got to the bottom of the on ramp Zack stopped his bike. There was a solid line of stalled cars on both lanes. They sat there idling the bikes, and stared at the tangle of cars.

  Zack circled his finger over his head to signal Rosy, and then began turning his bike to go back the way they had come. When they got back to the house the front window was broken. They found a brick in the living room floor.

  “Bastards!” Rosy exclaimed.

  “No use getting excited, we can't stay here, we just have to figure how we are going to get out.”

  “Do you think we can use the number ten East?”

  “Even if we could I don't want to end up on the desert. Do you remember the old fire road at the end of Tujunga canyon road? I was over it once, and it goes all the way over the mountains. The I-5 would be clear up there. We should come out at Castaic Junction.”

  “Yes, but can we climb fire roads with street bikes?”

  “We might. At least it will get us out of the L.A. Basin if we can make it through Burbank. We can try to take side streets through North Hollywood, and pick up the Tejunga canyon road. I figure we can make it in four hours in the least.”

  “Ok big boy, lets go.”

  They threaded in and out of side streets that he wasn't familiar with, and sometimes had to double back. They had no more than crossed over into North Hollywood and met a lion coming down a street toward them.

  Zack stopped quickly and sat the bike watching the lion, “What the hell is that?” Rosy asked.

  “Its a lion, don't you know a lion when you see one?”

  “Well...what's it doing in the street?”

  “I guess someone freed the zoo animals as there would be no one to feed them.”

  The lion saw them and turned off through some hedges. A mile further down someone shot at them from a house. The bullet zinged off the concrete in front of Zacks tire, and he gunned it. He was going fifty miles an hour when he came to a sharp curve, and he felt his back tire slip a little. As soon as he got through the curve he checked his rear view, and was relieved to see his wife right behind him. He pulled over to the curb and stopped the bike, and his hands were shaking.

  Rosy was calm, “That was close.” She said.

  “Are you ok? I nearly lost the bike back there.”

  “I'm ok, I saw what was happening with your bike, and I got slowed down enough to get through the curve.”

  They had to take more side streets which meant more backtracking, and by the time they reached the Tujunga Canyon road Zack was ready to call it quits for the day. Their mental systems were ready to call it a day too, because they had seen so many dead on the way.

  Zack cut the engine on his bike, “Lets find a place to hole up for the night.”

  Rosy breathed a sigh of relief. She got off the bike, pulled off her helmet and shook out her hair.

  “There is lots of daylight left.” She said.

  “Yes, but the dark may find us up in the Canyon. There's a house over there with a for rent sign on it so its probably empty. You stay here while I go check it out.”

  She watched him disappear around the side of the house, and then saw him open the front door. He lifted on the garage door and it raised easily. She cranked her bike and ran it into the garage. She went through the garage entrance and saw that the house was completely empty. He came through the door with their sleeping bags and spread them out by the large front window.

  By the next morning at dawn they were both somewhat refreshed. They rolled the bike out of the garage and into the street. They started the bikes and entered the Tujunga canyon road for the long climb over the mountain.

  Friends

  “Need any help?” the man called out.

  Virgil thought they might be part of one of the motorcycle gangs out of L.A and he listened for other bikers coming behind them, but heard nothing. There was not much wind in the canyon and he knew he would be able to hear more bikes heading this way.

  The man was dressed in full leathers and so was the woman. She was a tiny woman and she looked out of place on the large bike.

  “I might need someone to steer the truck,” he called back. The man cranked the big Harley and pulled it closer; the woman stayed where she was. Virgil saw her hand go into her leather jacket, and he knew she had a gun in there. The large man got off the bike and walked over to the truck and got in.

  “Pull until it gets to the edge of the road, then stop, and we’ll push it over th
e side, ok?”

  “Ok,” Virgil said, as he cranked the big Land Rover’s engine.

  The chain went taut as the jeep pulled the truck to the edge of the road. The man got out as Virgil unhooked the chain; he unhooked the other end. They both walked to the back of the water truck, and with a good shove the truck rolled over the edge of the canyon road and crashed down through the underbrush to come to rest at the bottom of the canyon.

  “Thanks,” Virgil said, as he gathered up the chain.

  “You’re welcome,” the big man replied. “You think maybe you might want a couple people riding along with you?”

  Virgil looked warily at the man’s bearded face, stained teeth, and half shell helmet. He tried to read the man’s eyes, but the eyes told him nothing, as if the man took things as they came. “How do we know we can trust you?” He looked at him flatly.

  “You don’t, but I don’t figure any of us have much of a chance with just the two of us.”

  Virgil thought a minute. “How good do you ride those things?”

  “Buddy, I was born on a hog. How good can you drive that thing?” he said, pointing at the Land Rover.

  Virgil laughed, “I can drive it, and I can fix it. I owned a garage a ways back down the hill.”

  By this time, the woman had walked over from the bike, and stood a few feet away, listening to the two men talk. She said nothing. Jan was looking suspiciously at her; she had a plain face, and a hard look about her. The crow’s feet around her eyes and the streaks of gray in her long black hair announced that she was in her mid to late forties.

  “You planning on going over the mountain and coming out at Castaic?”

  “Yeah, that was the plan.” Virgil’s instincts were in full gear, as he appraised the situation. He liked the man; he didn’t know about the woman. “So you think we might do each other some good?”

  “We might. Hell…I’m just taking things as they go.”

  “Where did you come from?”

  “We came out of Anaheim. It's pretty rough back there. The people who survived are killing each other right and left; we figured we would scoot.”

  “Were you part of some biker group down there?”

  “We had our Bro’s, but the most of them died. I don’t know what happened to the one or two that lived, the club fell apart fast.”

  Virgil couldn’t exactly place why, but he trusted the big man. He had a Lone Wolf patch on his jacket, and that was encouraging too. “I’m Virgil,” he reached out his hand. The big man took it into his huge paw. His hands were rough and cracked from hard work.

 

  “I’m Zack Taylor, and that there is my wife, Rosy.” He indicated the woman in the leathers. “Come on over Rosy; we’re going to do a ride along with these folks.”

  Rosy came walking over and extended her hand. She had grease embedded in her long nails, and she looked gravely up at him.

  “Jan, get out and meet these folks.” She got out of the jeep and came around. The women eyed each other up and down, and then as if some silent communication passed between them, they gave each other approval of some kind.

  You can never figure women out. The thought passed through Virgil’s mind like a fleeting bird, and then he was all business again. “Since we are going to do this thing, we need to trust each other explicitly; do you two have any food?”

  “We got enough for three or four days in our saddle bags; how much you got?”

  “About the same; maybe a little more.”

  Zack glanced up at the embankment, then back down the road, “You ready to ride? It's not safe sitting still for very long. Some people camped and were killed back down the road; both had shot gun blasts to the chest. The world has gone crazy, man.”

  “Yeah, let’s roll.”

  The Ingathering

  The two cranked their powerful engines, and the two big bikes made a loud racking sound that broke the silence of Tujunga Canyon. Virgil started the Land Rover and moved slowly up the canyon road. They passed house after house with their neat landscaping already becoming overgrown with weeds. They saw no one in any of the houses.

  A brush fire will take out every one of these houses. Virgil thought as he maneuvered the land rover around the steep curves.

  They soon came to the end of the paved road, and from here on, it would be just a pig trail of a road on over the mountain.

  Virgil stopped the land rover and walked back to Zacks bike, “I’ve only been over this road once, years ago, it is just a forestry road now, and it may be washed out in places, if you need anything honk your horns.”

  “These street bikes aren’t that great off road, but dirt bikes can’t haul as much. We’ll just have to see how it goes.” Zack said, indicating the road ahead.

  The Land Rover began to seesaw back and fourth on its heavy springs as it started the steep climb. The road snaked back and fourth up the mountain as the oak gave way to conifers. Although the state forestry maintained the road fairly well, it washed out often in heavy rains.

  “Do you trust these people?” Jan yelled above the noise of the Jeep’s groaning engine and the roar of the two bikes right behind them.

  “Yeah, I trust them for now. Even so, you keep your hand on that shotgun, and if they make a wrong move, kill them both.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that,” she said, as she hooked her hand around the grab rail over the glove box of the jeep.

  “You better, if you want to live,” he said, matter of fact. She looked sharply at him.

  “You have got to realize that things have changed, honey, and the world has just taken a huge dump on us. It ain’t civilized anymore, if it ever was.” The conversation came to a halt as the Jeep began to buck and sway up the steep mountain road, and the Harley's screamed, grunted, and spun their wheels while trying to get a grip on the loose gravel that coated the road.

 

  I took them two hours to navigate the mountain road and come to the top of the mountain, and Virgil stopped the Jeep and killed the motor. The two bikers pulled up along side, and did the same. All they could hear in the silence was the sowing of the wind through the pine forest. It was about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, and the sun was baking the pine trees while the smell of pine needles and resin soaked the air.

  They looked behind them at the Los Angles basin, and saw that the air was clearer than they had ever seen it, the tiny houses stood out crystal clear as dots in the valley below. The germ had taken care of what the EPA could not.

  “What say we camp here for the night, Virgil? From here we have good vision, and a clear field of fire.”

  “Sounds good to me, Zack. If we keep going, it’s going to put us in the low land around Castaic Junction; more dangerous there.”

  They looked across the hills; a forest fire burned somewhere up past Castaic Junction. Virgil reached into the Land Rover and pulled out his binoculars to have a look. He could see two gas stations and a grocery store at Castaic junction clearly through the lenses, but he saw no one. He swept the binoculars further on toward the smoke and saw the flames licking up to the sky. The fire, being swept through the grass and trees by the wind, had already jumped the freeway, with no one to fight the fire. He gave the glass to Zack, and waited while Zack scanned the visible terrain. He noticed with approval that Zack scanned the terrain with great care.

  “I think we need to get off the road and back up into the trees a way for the night…There’s no telling who might come in behind us. I don’t think we have to worry too much about people trying to get into Los Angeles, but there are some mighty bad people trying to get out, though,” Zack said, as he handed the binoculars back.

  Virgil thought about that a minute. “Yeah, far enough back to make a small fire; it gets cold up here at night.”

  “Let's do it then.”

  Zack walked over to the big motorcycle, and cranking it up, he spun off over a clearing to their right, and headed for a grove of pine trees. They gathered fire wood
for the night, and the girls opened cans of food, and began heating it over the fire.

  Dark came slowly to the hills, and the air cooled swiftly. Zack threw another stick of wood on the fire as they began to huddle close to it in the night chill.

  The pines blowing in the breeze gave off eerie shadows in the light of the camp fire.

  “Virgil, do you think this is what the Bible speaks about in Revelation?” Zack looked at him intently, rubbing his hands together.

  Virgil looked sharply at him, “You read the Bible?” he asked, surprised.

  Zack, with his bearded, tough looking face, in his motorcycle garb, and his wife with her hard looks, looked right out of a Hell’s Angels gang of cut throats, dopers, and thieves. “Yeah, I read it from time to time, I never did know how to take it…too many unusual things that are said in it, like a donkey talking to a man and such, but I have read most of it.”

  “I don’t know, Zack, a preacher who has been coming on TV for a while now has been saying something like this was going to happen. I thought he was pretty loony, but now I’m not sure but what he was crazy like a fox.”

  “Yeah, I heard him talking about the four horsemen of Revelation. Society fell so quickly; one day we’re having it pretty good, then the next, BAM!” Zack said, striking his hands together.

  “You guys are giving me the creeps.” Jan leered at the both of them. She looked out of place from the rest with her Clara Paget designer jeans and her cover girl make-up.

  Rosy just sat and looked around at the three of them, her face stoical. Suddenly, she looked at Jan and snarled, “You might try getting your head out of your ass lady, or haven’t you noticed we are not in the best position to go getting on our high horses here.”

  Rosy hadn’t said two words since they hooked up, and Jan looked at her plain face with surprise, “What do you know about it?”

  Rosy turned and looked at her, “I know enough to start getting my head on straight, and you better start doing the same. My mom was a Christian. I didn’t believe her, but I do now!”

  “Cut it, the both of you! We don’t have the luxury of fighting here. If this is going to start, we’re beat already.”

  “Zack’s right, girls, we better start trying to think…all of us. Zack, do you believe this is what the Bible and that preacher were talking about?”

  “I wasn’t sure before, but I took a Bible class at UCLA for extra credit, and I remember explicitly what it says in Revelation about one of the horsemen… ‘And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.’ If you look at all the financial woes the whole earth has been in, then along comes this, it begins to make sense. Yeah, I believe we are right smack dab in the tribulation time,” Zack said, as he spat at the fire.

  “You went to UCLA?” Virgil looked at Zack in surprise.

  “Four years; right out of high school and into college.”

  “You don’t look like a college grad.”

  “What does a college grad look like?”

  “Well…they are not usually the biker variety.”

  Zack grinned at him. “I started riding when I was eleven years old, then I started fixing my own bikes, and I have had a love affair with bikes ever since. I didn’t get to ride much in college, but when I got out, I decided I didn’t want the business world, so I took a job in construction and became the foreman. That gave me time to ride. I met Rosy here, after a club party, and we hooked up; we’ve been together nine years now. What about you? What’s your background?”

  “Oh, nothing much…I always loved tinkering with cars, so as soon as I got out of high school, dad built me a garage, and he helped me run it until he passed away a few years ago. Mom passed away right after. I just don’t think she could live without dad; she took pneumonia and just faded away. I guess I was lucky to have parents who could afford to give me a start.”

  Rosy suddenly sat up, “You know, it’s almost like we were meant to meet. With the combined experience you two have, we might be able to survive this.”

  Virgil and Zack looked sharply at her plain face, and Virgil saw a wisdom there he hadn’t seen before.

  “You may be right, Rosy; neither of us wants to harm the other, and I think we can make a pretty good team.”

  Zack held his hands out to the fire and stared into it in deep thought. Finally he spoke. “I don’t know about you all, but I am going to start praying and living the best I can. Maybe the God of that Bible has something for me to do yet. I don’t want to hold out false hope, because if this is what I studied about in Revelation, its going to get worse…far worse, but I don’t want to spend an eternity in hell, after going through hell on this old earth.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean, buddy.”

  “Me too,” Rosy chimed in.

  Jan just looked at the three of them and snickered. Her face looked pinched in the glow of the fire light.

  Rosy looked at her and spoke, “My mother was a Christian; she took me to church up until she died. I was only fourteen at the time. I slept around until I got hell beat out of me. We lived in East LA until Mom passed away. Dad had left us years ago, when I was a baby. When Mom passed away, I lost it a little, I guess, but now I’m glad she took me to church regularly.”

  “Zack saved my life when a pimp tried to beat me to death… Zack came along down the alley on his bike and whipped him to a bloody pulp. I thought he was going to kill him. He put me on his bike, and I’ve been with him ever since. Times were always hard in East LA, never knowing where your next meal was coming from.”

  Jan looked humbly at her with new respect in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Rosy.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about, sis. If I hadn’t of had hard times, I don’t believe I would be able to face this; plus, it gave me Zack.” Zack put his arms around her shoulder, and tears came into her eyes, but she quickly brushed them away with the back of her hand.

  Virgil looked at the two of them, and was glad he had found them. Jan was humbled by the poignancy of the moment, and she slipped her hand into Virgil’s and looked up at him. “I guess I better start giving my man some respect.” She smiled.

  “Guess you better, and I guess I better start taking better care of my woman.”

  After a while they crawled into their sleeping bags, and soon the sounds of regular breathing of the sleep of the exhausted came to Virgil’s ears, but he lay awake a long time thinking of the conversation that had taken place between the two couples.

  A night bird gave its sleepy call across the top of the mountain, the wind sowed through the pine trees with its soft voice, and for the first time in his life, he thought deeply about God, and he prayed until he slept.

  At day break, Virgil gently shook the others awake and they silently loaded the bikes and the Jeep. No one said anything as they quickly packed. The bikes roared to life, and the Jeep growled its displeasure at the whole situation.

  Jan crawled into the Jeep and they started the long slow downgrade off the mountain and away from Tujunga Canyon and the life they had left behind forever. The bikes popped and the Jeep groaned as they made their way down the last steep road, and started the gradual climb toward Castaic Junction.

  By 9 o’clock Castaic came into view. They stopped the vehicles while Virgil scanned the two filling stations and the store, a half mile away with the binoculars. He thought he saw movement at the side of one of the buildings, but he couldn’t be sure, and he didn’t see it again.

  “We better go in slow and easy,” he said, as he slipped the binoculars between the seats. They drove on slowly toward Castaic; Jan held the shotgun between her legs as they drove. The scrub oak gave way to pasture land the closer they got to Castaic junction. As they pulled up under the overhang of one of the filling stations, something began gnawing at Virgil’s gut. He couldn’t put his hand on it, but something just did not feel right.

  Zack and Rosy pulled up beside them on the bikes, but left the motors running. Virg
il eyed the grocery store across the street from the Chevron station, and again thought he saw movement. Just then, a door opened in a metal outbuilding, and a man came out with a rifle in his hand; two more emerged from the back of the filling station.

  “You got gas mister, and we want it.”

  Two more armed men emerged from the grocery store. Zack just looked at Virgil, drew his forty five automatic and started shooting, taking out two of the men closest to him. Virgil dove over Jan and opened the door, pushing her out and to the ground. He came up shooting the 357 Magnum at the three who came out of the grocery store, hitting two and putting a bullet through the other man’s leg. The man went down, his leg splintered by the heavy bullet. One of the men started running up the road toward the freeway. Zack jumped on the hog, and chased the man, firing as he went. The man went down in a pool of blood a hundred yards away.

  Zack came riding back, and asked, “Did we get them all?”

  Virgil was standing by the Jeep, injecting a shotgun shell into the barrel of the 12-gauge. “There’s one lying over there; I think I hit his leg.”

  “Kill him, Virgil. If you don’t, I will.”

  They walked over to the man who lay there groaning, his leg was crooked and bent back under his body where the bullet had taken out the bone.

  “Please help me; I’m going to die if you don’t.”

  “You’re going to die anyway, mister. You chose your path to follow. Now you’re going to follow it to hell.

  “No…please!”

  Virgil shot the man through the head, and then turned and walked back toward the Jeep, he had spatters of blood on his face. Jan looked at him with horror in her eyes. Rosy was her stoical self; she just turned and got on her bike.

  Virgil stared hard at her, and read her eyes. “You didn’t even fire the shotgun…Woman, you better get the craziness out of your skull, forget the fingernails and the hair do’s, and begin realizing that world is gone. Those people would have killed us and raped you till you died.”

  Jan looked down. “I just can’t kill people like that.” The tears leaked down her face, make-up beginning to run.

  “Then you’ll die, and I can’t help you. You have to do your share or you will take others with you.”

  Zack walked over to Rosy, taking her pistol and smelling the barrel. “It’s been fired,” she said. “Why don’t you guys go and see what you can find in the grocery store, while I talk to her, OK?” Rosy looked at them and winked.

  “Ok,” Zack said. Virgil followed him toward the grocery store. “Let’s give them a few minutes, but only a few; we’ve got to go.”

  “Yeah,” Virgil replied.

  The grocery store had been stripped of everything; they walked to the shed in back of the station, and found a hand pump with a long hose attached. Zack carried the pump to the locked fuel tank.

  “Find something we can get this lock off with.”

  Virgil walked into the garage bay of the filling station and came out with a pair of bolt cutters. They were able to obtain about four gallons of dirty watery fuel from the very bottom of the tank. They filled the vehicles with the spare clean fuel and then poured the dirty fuel into the spare cans.

  The two women came up just as they were strapping the can onto the back of the Land Rover.

  “She’ll be alright now,” Rosy spoke up.

  “We can’t depend on her,” Zack replied.

  Rosie’s eyes blazed at Zack. “Now you listen to me, Zackery Taylor. You don’t know a damn thing about women, and you never have, so shut your trap!”

  Zack looked at his wife in amazement; he had never seen her that way in all the time they had been together, and she had certainly never spoken to him in such a manner.

 

  “I think she means it, Zack.” Virgil grinned at him.

  “We’ve got to get along, and we have to depend on each other. That’s just all there is to it.” Virgil gathered Jan into his arms. The tears leaked out again, but she had a different look about her.

  “I can do it; you’ll see.”

  “I know you can. Let’s get on the road before we have more trouble. I think I heard a car coming down the mountain.”

  A pickup with two people in the cab and two on the back with guns pulled under the overhang of the filling station just as they climbed onto the freeway, heading north. They stared as they passed the blackened land the fires had left behind. The land looked surreal in the face of what had just taken place, but it looked fitting for such a time and place as this.

  They came upon a Winnebago 30 minutes up the road, and a young girl got out and stood in the middle of the road. The Winnebago took up almost all of both lanes. Virgil stopped the Jeep in front of the girl, and she came around to the driver’s door.

  “My folks are sick; can you help us?” she said in a small voice.

  “I doubt it. Do they have the plague?”

  “I think so,” the girl said.

  “Please Mister, they are all I have. Everybody else is dead.”

  Virgil thought a minute, he looked out over the strata at the side of the road where the road had been sliced through the hills, and the rock strata leaned up at a crazy angle from the pushing of the tectonic plates, the motorcycles idling behind him. Zack and Rosy cut the engines and walked around to the door.

  “What’s going on?”

  “The girl wants us to look at her folks; she thinks they have the plague. What the hell,” Virgil said, as he got out and walked to the door of the camper. He held a handkerchief over his nose and mouth, and climbed in. The man was already dead, and the woman gave it up just as he was taking her pulse.

  He climbed out of the camper and walked back to the girl. “They’re both dead now, honey.”

  “Oh no!” The girl looked at them, stricken. Jan put her arms around the girl, and pulled her close. The girl sobbed.

  “Do you want to go with us now? We have to go.” Jan motioned Virgil to get in the Jeep.

  Zack and Rosy went back to the bikes, and Virgil waited while Jan whispered some words in the girl’s ear. Soon, she led her to the door of the Jeep, and the girl crawled into the back seat.

  “Lay down in the seat, Honey.” Jan moved stuff farther toward the back, and the girl lay down. Jan tucked a pillow under her head.

  “Drive, Virgil.”

  Virgil started the Jeep and skirted the camper, then on up the freeway that led to Bakersfield and points north. The girl slept the sleep of the exhausted as they wound their way to Gorman, which lay at the top of the “grape vine.” There they would make the long steep descent into the valley.

  The road was cluttered with vehicles, cars, trucks, campers; but for the most part, they were on the side of the road, where people had pulled over, too sick to drive, and had died in them. Everywhere they looked, the buzzards wheeled overhead.

  A little further on, they came to another stalled vehicle in one lane of the freeway. A man got out of the car and stood in the middle of the other lane. Virgil honked his horn, but the man would not move, so he pulled to a stop about 30 feet in front of the man. Virgil glanced over at Jan, who had the shotgun trained on the man, her finger on the trigger.

  “We don’t mean any harm to you,” the man said. “We just need help.”

  Virgil looked over at the car. There was a woman with two kids, looking scared. He saw no one else. Virgil got out of the Jeep and walked toward the man, his hand on the butt of his revolver.

  The man was dressed in slacks and a white shirt with narrow suspenders holding the gray slacks up, he looked like a banker, or perhaps a lawyer with his perfect haircut and clean shaven face just beginning to show a five o’clock shadow.

  “You going to shoot me with that thing?”

  “I might. It depends on you. Where did you come from? Is anyone sick?”

  “I came from Ventura. No, no one’s sick, I’m a doctor…they’re mostly all dead back there. I picked the woman up on the way, then the two kids. He
r husband died on the way out of LA; the children’s folks died too. I just couldn’t leave them. Did you see a gang back down the road a ways? They tried to way lay us at Castaic Junction, but we ran. They didn’t hear our car coming up, and we saw them ducking behind buildings, so I figured they were up to no good.”

  “They tried to take our gas. We killed them,” Virgil said simply.

  “Do you figure there will be more on the roads like that?” the doctor asked.

  “There’ll be more… people are either decent or not, and they will turn the way they are bent.”

  Zack and Rosy killed the bikes, and Zack got off and walked slowly up. He just stood listening, and said nothing.

  “I think my car overheated; it doesn’t seem to be out of gas. I don’t know anything about cars; too busy going through medical school to learn much about them. Do you know anything about them?”

  “I’ll take a look, but we can’t stay here long; too dangerous.”

  “I appreciate any help you can offer.”

  Zack already had the hood up. “Busted water hose; top one,” he said simply.

  “I have some extra hose in the jeep. Yours is a preformed hose, but I think we can get the straight one to work.”

  Virgil rumbled around in the back of the Jeep, and came back with the hose and a flat screw driver. He had the hose off and another one on in about five minutes. He got the 5-gallon Jerry can of water off the Jeep, and filled the radiator. The woman and the children sat silent all the while. The boy looked to be about eight, and the girl about six.

  “You kids hungry?”

  “Yes sir,” said the boy, politely. “We ain’t eat since yesterday.”

  “I’ll get you something to eat,” Jan said.

  Jan took the children to the other side of the Jeep, and began rifling in the back for food for them.

  “What are your plans?” The doctor looked at them intently.

  “We, meaning Zack and I, have been talking that over. Jan’s sister and her husband have a ranch just outside of Porterville, which lays the other side of Bakersfield. We have sort of worked on a plan to build up a strong hold. I’ve been up there and it’s a pretty good location, with the mountains on the back side of the property, and a river running right near the house.

  “We may have to plan on defending it, though. People who are bad will get worse and try to take everything they can by force; we don’t aim to let that happen.”

  “Sounds like it might work for a while.”

  “Well…, it seems to Zack and me to be our responsibility to try and help others, instead of dying quickly ourselves, as long as we have a say in it.”

  The doctor held out his hand, “My name is Jack Perkins, the kids name is Bobby and Linda Bailey, I don't know the woman's name. She hasn't spoken a word since we found her.”

  “Glad to meet you doc.”

  The doctor looked off over the hills, “Do you think this is what the Bible talked about in Revelation, Virgil?”

  “We have talked about that too, and yes, we think it is.”

  “I have never been a religious man. I guess eight years of medical school took care of that, but I am beginning to be a believer. If this is correct, we may be able to tell what to expect just by reading the Bible. I aim to do that as soon as I have the time.”

  “Right now, we have to keep rolling.”

  “Do you think we might be able to tag along?”

  “I was hoping you would say that, Doc. We could use your skills as a physician. We may be able to offer you some protection in return. Can you shoot?”

  “No, I’m afraid I never learned to do that either. I took an oath to save life, not take it. However, that probably doesn’t count anymore; I’ll do what I can.”

  “How about it, Zack?”

  “I think we need him. Let’s get back on the road.”

  They started the little cavalcade – the two children, the Doc, and the woman, following Zack and Rosy.

  Virgil noticed the woman hadn’t said a word. He thought she was probably still in shock, possibly from losing her husband and family. At Gorman they drove slowly past some people camped there, but they didn’t want to take chances with them. The people just stood and looked at them as they passed on the freeway a few hundred feet away. There’s some safety in numbers. Virgil thought as they passed the party camped at the gas station and restaurant that was Gorman, but at any rate the people didn’t show any sign of hostility toward them. He supposed they might be headed for Oregon, or northern California. He wondered if the ranch would even be there.

  Virgil stopped at the head of the grapevine, and walked back to the vehicles. “Everybody be sure and check their brakes; it gets really steep going down the mountain.” Zack and Doc just nodded, and Virgil got back in the car for the long descent into the valley below. Funny, he thought, before this, I have crossed the pass a hundred times, and never even thought about checking my brakes. How things have changed in such a short time.

  Halfway down the grade they came upon a semi-truck jack-knifed across the road. Its trailer had turned over and lay on its side across the freeway. Virgil stopped the Jeep, and walked around the cab of the truck. No one was around. He came back to the motorcycles. “I think we can make it around in front of the cab of the truck, Zack. “You two follow the Doc, then catch up and retake your position…No, on second thought it might be good if you follow the Doc the rest of the way. You can maneuver better than he can.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  He patted Zack on the arm and climbed back into the Jeep. It turned out to be a little tricky to skirt the truck and stay out of the ditch, but they went around without incident. They rode on for the better part of an hour, driving slowly, until the outskirts of Bakersfield came into view. Then they exited off the I-5 and onto the 99 freeway, which led all the way to Sacramento.

  Virgil again stopped the Jeep, and walked back to Zack’s motorcycle. “I think we better not try to stop in Bakersfield; it’s too dangerous. We’ll go straight on to the Porterville cut off, I’m going to drive faster going past Bakersfield, if nothing gets in my way.”

  “I was thinking the same thing, buddy.”

  Virgil turned, got into the car, and drove on. Before they got into Bakersfield, they could see the smoke from the fires. Bakersfield was burning.

 

  By the time they got to Wible Road and the highway 58 cutoff, the smoke was so thick they could barely breathe. The freeway was choked with overturned, wrecked, and burning cars. He wondered what was going on in that town, but he dared not stop or slow down, as he skirted the wrecks as fast as he could. The sooner we get through here, the better I will like it. The thought rolled through his mind as he skirted another wreck.

  Just outside of Bakersfield, they approached a wooden barricade across the freeway. Some men with guns stood in front of the barricade. He stopped the Jeep and got out and walked around to Zack. “Barricade about 200 yards up the road.” He stated simply. It’s being guarded by armed men, Zack.”

  “Well, to hell with them, man. We ain’t stopping; let’s plow through them. I’ll use your Jeep and Doc’s car as cover.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. They may be local militia, but we can’t take the chance.”

  He walked on back to the doctor’s car. “Doc, there’s a barricade up the road. We are going to try and punch through it, no matter what happens, don’t stop, ok?”

  “Ok, Virgil.”

  “You kids lay low in the back seat. Lady, you better get down too.” The woman looked at him with blank eyes, not saying anything; she didn’t move to comply either. I wonder if she will ever make it back to the real world. The thought slid through his mind quickly, and he turned to the job at hand.

  Virgil walked back to his Jeep and got in. The big Land Rover had an iron brush guard on the front, with a heavy winch mounted on it. He drove slowly toward the barricade, and then punched the gas pedal to the floor board.

  T
he men guarding the road saw what was happening and scrambled to get out of the way as the Land Rover roared toward the road block. The car crashed through the barricade at 60 miles an hour, breaking up the wood as it went. He heard a shot ring out and saw Rosie’s bike wobble in his rear view mirror, but the bike straightened up and came on, the Doc following in hot pursuit.

  He kept going for more than a mile before he slowed the car, stopped, and pulled over. He got out and walked back. “Everybody ok?” He looked at the small group.

  “I think I’m hit,” said Rosy. “My arm.”

  “Doc,” he called, “can you come take a look?”

  The doctor got out of his car and walked forward. Rosy was pulling her heavy leather jacket off. When she did, he saw the blood showing through her sleeve in the fleshy part of her upper arm. He took some sharp scissors from his medical bag and began cutting the sleeve away from the wound.

  “That’s my nicest blouse, Doc.”

  “We’ll get you another one.” He grinned at her.

  Zack frowned at the wound, “Damn, it don’t look bad, but that was close.”

  The doctor began swabbing the wound with an alcohol swab. “It’s just a flesh wound. She’ll be ok in a few days.” He put some kind of salve on the wound, and then bound up the arm with gauze.

  “Will you be ok to ride, Rosy?” Zack asked her tenderly.

  “Yeah, I’ll be ok, Zack. Let’s go,” she said, as she began pulling on her leather jacket.

  “I ought to go back and shoot every one of those sons a bitches,” Zack said angrily.

  “Zack, we can’t afford that kind of thing.” Virgil looked at him. “And you know it. We have to keep our heads if we are going to live long.”

  “I know it.” Zack got on the Harley and cranked the big bike up, but he looked mean. Virgil got the idea that if anyone touched his Rosy, they were in mortal danger.

  He walked to the Jeep and got in, cranked up, and drove on. It went smoothly the next five miles until they came to a sign that read “Porterville next exit.” The little cavalcade pulled in at the Chevron station, and a man walked out of the front door. He had a blue work uniform on, with a greasy rag hanging from his back pocket. They saw no sign of weapons on the man. They looked around suspiciously, but saw no one else.

  He walked up to Virgil’s jeep, “You need gas?”

  “Yeah, how much do you want for it?”

  “Man, I don’t want anything for it, what do I need money for?” The man looked at him in amusement. “Besides, you have to pump it from the ground yourself; no power.”

  “We’ll pump,” Virgil said with a grin. “What are you doing still here, if I might ask?” Virgil looked at the friendly man.

  “Got no place to go.” He looked at Virgil seriously. “Been following the news that people bring in. This thing has circled the globe and then some, the way I get it. People dying like flies. All my employees are dead, and so I alone am here. I buried them out back,” he said sadly.

  Virgil liked the man right away; he was fifty-ish with graying hair and a rugged face. They pumped the gas out of the tanks into cans furnished by the station owner. “Seen any bad men or gangs?”

  “I’ve seen a few, but they haven’t given me any trouble since I just give them what they want. Where did you folks come from?”

  “LA basin.”

  “How is it down there?”

  “Bad, and getting worse. We had to fight a gang down at Castaic Junction; it wasn’t a pretty sight. We picked up the folks in the car on the way to Gorman. The kids lost their family, and so did the woman in the car.”

  “That’s really tough,” the man said sadly. I am divorced; my ex lived in San Francisco with my kids. I don’t know how they have fared.”

  Virgil saw tears start to gather in the man’s eyes. “Why don’t you come with us? We are heading up to Porterville to my brother-in-law’s ranch.” He knew he should have consulted with Zack on this, but he blurted it out before he knew he was going to, and the man’s sadness touched him deeply.

  “I might just do that. You seem to be some decent folks, and there’s not much gas left to pump anyhow.” The man seemed in deep thought for a minute. “Yeah, I think I’ll tag along. You know you are a natural born leader, don’t you?”

  “Me?” Virgil said. “No, I’m not a leader.”

  “Yes, you are,” the man said, as he looked deeply into Virgil’s eyes. The man’s eyes twinkled a little.

  “Come on over and meet the rest. What’s your name?”

  “Gus Malloy.”

  They walked over to the cavalcade just as Zack was finished with the last car. “Zack, I want you to meet Mr. Gus Malloy; this here is Zack Taylor.” Virgil gave introductions all around. “I took it on myself to invite him to go with us.” Zack just looked at him, but he knew Virgil well enough by now to trust his judgment.

  The little group began to pile into the vehicles, and Gus fell in behind in his Ford pickup. They drove the remaining miles to Porterville without further incident. They passed through deserted streets. The pipes on the Jeep and the motorcycles echoed through the streets, and they saw no movement at all. If there were any people, they were staying behind locked doors.

  The line of vehicles circled the dam, and began the climb toward the ranch. Soon they were in the foothills, and came to the locked gate that was across the road to the ranch. Virgil got out of the jeep, and walked over to the gate. He shook the lock, and a voice came to him from a copse of trees a few feet away.

  “There is a rifle trained on you, mister. You better turn around and go back to where you came from.”

  Virgil slowly raised his hands. “This is my brother-and sister-in-law’s ranch. They invited us here.”

  “You say John is your brother-in-law?”

  “That’s right; my name is Virgil Grissom, and this is my wife, Jan, sitting in the Jeep.”

  “You will have to stay there until I can get someone up to the ranch to verify you. I suggest you don’t move a muscle in the mean time. We have orders to shoot to kill.”

  “Fair enough; could I sit in the Jeep? I’m pretty worn out,” he called back.

  He heard some words he couldn’t make out; then the voice answered, “I guess that would be ok. I better not see any weapons, though. You get in there and sit still.”

  Virgil turned and climbed back into the seat of the Land Rover. He saw a man leave up the gully and come out a hundred yards up the road on a horse. He knew the ranch lay a half mile up the road, and it would take a while before anybody could get back. He stared at the rolling hills that rose one after the other to the smoky air of the Sierra Nevada range.

  Cattle occupied those hills and draws, enough meat for many seasons, but he knew in his heart their lives would probably run out before too many seasons had passed.

  “I wonder if Nell is ok,” Jan said, while she fidgeted in her seat.

  “No use letting your imagination run amuck, honey. Whatever has taken place here, has taken place, and there’s nothing we can do but accept it.”

  “Yeah, I know, but my heart is pounding.”

  “I know, Jan. I’m scared too, but we have to get tough in a hurry.”

  “I love you, Virgil.”

  “I know, and I love you too.”

  “What will we do if they won’t let us on the ranch?”

  “We’ll do what we have to, to survive; either here or there, I guess. I was thinking that if they don’t allow us on, we could maybe find a ranch further on into the Sierra Nevada’s and build a strong hold there. Many people, I think, will head for northern California and Oregon. This is our best bet here if John or Nell is still alive, we don’t need the snow in winter.”

  “Nell is such a sweet sister; always has been. Do you remember how they helped us when we were first married?”

  “I remember. John always seemed to be a good sort too. They were…are…a good match.”

  “Are we a good match, Virgil?”

&nb
sp; “Naw, but I make do.”

  She grinned and smacked him on the shoulder. “Aww! That hurts.”

  “Baby!”

  They sat and talked quietly as the minutes passed, and then from around the bend in the road, they saw two horses approaching. Then the horses disappeared into the gully where the man had come out on the road.

  “I figure there’s good cover from where they went in to the gate.”

  “Yeah, I don’t see them,” Jan said.

  Soon a figure emerged from the trees; it was their brother-in-law, John Harris.

  “Well, if it ain’t Virgil and Jan! I had about given up hope you two were even still alive. How was the trip up, Virgil?” He hugged Jan, and wrung Virgil’s hand.