The System

She had taken AP Government, after all.

“I’m sure you aren’t the only one who survived the virus after exposure. You can’t be.” She said it once and she said it again, for his sake.

“Maybe if we get to Nebraska and we don’t—” Grant stopped and looked at Lucy; he lowered his eyes.

“It’s okay. Don’t stop yourself on my account.”

“If we can’t find anything…maybe we can really work on hunting for other survivors.”

Lucy shook her head. “That never works in the movies,” she replied. “They’d be nice and accommodating at first and then we’d wake up right at the moment where they were about to eat us. Survivors of the apocalypse are always ca

Home. Oregon was still her home.

“Sure,” he conceded. He leaned in to the fire and grabbed a stick from nearby and poked at a log; tiny sparks flew up into the flue. “Sure.”

They slept in the lodge that night, moving their feathered comforters down in front of the fire and sleeping side by side. Grant polished off half the bottle of wine before curling up into a ball and snoring into the wee hours of the morning. Lucy used pillows from the lounge couches as a mattress, but by the time the sun crept into the mountainous skyline, Lucy found herself flat on the floor—her cheek cool against the wooden boards.

Drool-stained and sweaty, Lucy sat up and rubbed her eyes. Her body was thick and sluggish from exhaustion and dehydration. She poked Grant with her toe, jostling his body and moving him back and forth until he peeked out of one eye and then clamped it shut with a groan.

“Morning already?” he asked.

“Uh-huh,” Lucy replied.

He rolled into a sitting position and lifted his arms above his head. Then he stretched with a loud yawn and plopped his hands back down; his front cowlick stuck straight up, the rest of his shaggy hair falling in clumps around his face.

“Breakfast?” he asked.

“We have our ready-meals. Let’s eat on the road.”

“Oh, look who’s eager now?” Grant smiled.

She shrugged. It was true she woke up with more resolve to leave their secluded hideaway, but she still felt covered in general unease. There was no more procrastination, no more conjecture. It was like she had been standing on the edge of a diving board, waiting for the motivation to fly forward into the water, and finally she realized that if she didn’t just jump someone would have to push her.

She hated being pushed.

“Let’s load up.”

“Okay.” Grant eyed her suspiciously. “No ceremonious goodbye? No morning walk around the lake? That’s so unlike you. I’d thought that you’d have written a eulogy to the mountain already.”

She shook her head, ignoring his playful dig. “I’m ready to see my family. I’m ready to know the truth.”

They walked back to their shared cabin and shoveled their few pieces of clothing, discarded toiletries, and remaining food containers into their backpacks and then trudged in silence back to their waiting car. Lucy did pause to take in the majestic Tetons and the glistening lake one last time; she wanted to write a note in the dust on the cabin’s kitchen counter: We were here. But at the last second she walked away, leaving the dust intact.

Grant backed out of the parking spot and traveled up through the winding roads back to the highway. While the highways were still littered with abandoned cars, this area of the country wasn’t inundated with blockage. There was just enough destruction to remind them that they weren’t just leaving their Yellowstone vacation and heading back to the real world.

“Keep an eye out for an exchange car,” Grant said to Lucy as he picked up speed. “We’ve got about half a tank left which won’t get us very far.”

“How far to our destination? Eight hours?”

“About.”

She drew in a shaky breath. Her hand went to Salem’s crucifix, a habit that had formed the past week.

“We’ve got this,” Grant said and he took his right hand off the steering wheel and reached over to give Lucy a comforting pat. She leaned in to his touch and let his hand linger on her shoulder. “Seriously, Lula…at the risk of sounding insensitive…what’s the worst that could happen?”

CHAPTER TWO

Portland, Oregon

Doctor Gloria Krause knelt over Ethan King—supine on the floor of the den—and ran her hand across his forehead. She clicked her tongue and adjusted her purple-framed glasses on the bridge of her nose and peered down at her patient, squinting in the dim light. A stethoscope around her neck dangled and swayed like a pendulum as she leaned forward. Krause slipped the ear tips into her ears and then placed the chest piece flat against Ethan’s exposed flesh. Her eyes focused on a point across the room, her mouth tight; then she sighed and removed the ear tips, and snapped the metal tubing back around her neck.

Darla, the thirty-three year-old mother and self-proclaimed Raider—those who helped steal from the dead and redistribute to the living—rubbed her hands over her eyes and looked at Ethan’s body. He had deteriorated rapidly in the last few days and it pained her to watch him so close to death. They were few now, just a small group: to lose one of their own at this point would be beyond a travesty; it simply wasn’t fair. Darla’s ventures into looting and trading took a hit after the Day Sixers, those who had survived the initial viral attack, passed away. The population in Portland and the surrounding areas had declined to just a handful of people: Most of them now congregating at the King home, and all of them the recipients of a lifesaving vaccine.

There was no other life.

No one else left.

“Is it time, Mom?” asked a young woman in the corner. She was tall, with frizzy auburn hair which she wore tucked behind her unpierced ears.

Doctor Krause nodded to her daughter and to the audience spread throughout the room. “Is it about noon? Yes. It’s time.”

Darla tied her sleek black hair up into a bun and took a step forward. She looked down at Ethan, his chest rising and falling, his hair matted to the side of his head. Then she turned to the doctor. “The light is best now. Joey and I already set up the house yesterday. If we need to move, we move now.”

Darla had spent the better part of her day yesterday hunting through the Whispering Waters subdivision looking for an empty, open, full of light, house that would convert into an operating room for Doctor Krause.

Doctor Krause, her daughter Ainsley, and a bumbling thirty-something Raider named Joey came into the picture through Principal Spencer. The principal was the black market mastermind, who emerged with a vengeance after the world was attacked by bioterrorists, and who had been given precious vaccines and one task: find a doctor for the ailing Ethan. When Darla had handed over the vials of the lifesaving medicines to the borderline sociopath, she had no way of knowing if Spencer would be able to fulfill his end of the bargain.

The day Lucy and Grant floated away over the Portland landscape, Darla left her five year-old son Teddy with the ailing Ethan and marched her way back to Pacific Lake High School, where she found the three recently vaccinated people waiting for her to explain their roles in this bizarre stage-play.

Spencer had used Joey to locate Doctor Krause and her surviving family—but the details after that were murky, told to Darla in snippets over the past week; little pieces of the puzzle slipping together to form a dark and depressing tale. All Darla knew was that Spencer had dumped them all unceremoniously out in front of the school to wait for her—like children waiting for the bus on the first day of school.