Tempest of Tennessee (Episode 1): Tempest of Tennessee Read online

  I shouted back, “I’m going to Henderson.”

  “Go back a quarter mile and take the trail through the clear cut you passed on the left. Follow the creek when you come to it and it’ll bring you back to the road past us. Don’t wander away from the creek toward our houses. We have sharpshooters watching the woods.”

  I could tell there was no use in arguing with him. I went back to where a logging company had harvested a few acres of trees. It took forty-five minutes the work around that half-mile stretch of houses.

  I stopped on the trail near the road to eat a can of Vienna sausage with crackers, washed down with powdered Gator Aide mix. I went the few yards to the creek to rinse my hands and face. I was about to return to the trail, but heard men talking. I hid behind a clumpy cedar, barely avoiding detection.

  Two men turned from the road onto the trail and stopped close enough for me to hear what they were saying. Peeking through the branches, I saw they wore hunters camouflage clothing and carried rifles.

  They were big men. One had red hair and a beard. The other man, the one talking was shorter, but wider than the redhead was, with muscles all the way up his neck to his head.

  “It’s like Bob figured, rural idiots. They’ll be easy to take down.”

  “You think the barricade at the other end’s as weak as this one?”

  “Hell, Brent, you can see as well as me. The road’s open and straight. Hay bales at the other end the same as this one, the two men standing behind the bales.”

  “What about the men he said are watching the trees?”

  “That’s what we’re here for. If they’re as stupid as the guards by the road are they’ll be easy to spot. It could be a bluff. There may not even be any.”

  “I hope Bob decides to hit em tonight. I’m hungry, but my kids are—.”

  “Can it, Brent, we’re all hungry. One thing I’m sick of is the rest of you acting like its Bob’s fault. It’s not his fault someone found our stash at the bugout. Personally, I think the bunch that didn’t show up from Memphis came earlier and took the supplies.”

  The Brent guy said, “Bob included too many people. None of us ever met Roberto… what the hell kind of name is that, anyway? Sounds like a foreigner to me.”

  The other man was becoming exasperated with Brent. “I said, can it, it doesn’t matter who took em. We’re all in the same boat and we’ll work through it. That’s what a survivalist does. We’ve stood around long enough. Let’s get this done and get back for our share of rations.”

  “One deer sure doesn’t feed twelve people very long.”

  “Quit your grousing, at least we had meat yesterday. Move it. Let’s find out if they have the trees watched. Depending on what we find, I’m going to recommend we hit them tonight. That many people are bound to have a lot of food.”

  I stayed where I was until I couldn’t hear them and then went to the road. Against my grain, but did it anyway, I turned to approach the blockade from the Henderson end.

  Again, a guard called for me to halt, but I shouted back, “Shoot me, but I’m coming close enough to tell you something.”

  “We will shoot you, girl,” the man shouted back.

  Ignoring him, I placed my rifle on the pavement and walked toward the hay bales.

  “Are you deaf? I will shoot you.”

  “Shoot, but you won’t know what I want to say to you.”

  I heard the guards speak to each other, but not clearly enough to know what was said, but the man shouted, “Stop at thirty-feet.”

  I understood his reason for caution, but he was beginning to piss me off. To be contrary, I said, “I’m coming to twenty.”

  He did let me get that close, but the tone of his command to “Halt right there,” told me not to push it further.

  “What’s so blame important you’d risk getting shot for?”

  “You’ll find out if you’ll stop shouting and listen.”

  I related what I’d overheard from the men on the trail. The man who’d done the shouting found a new attitude toward me. “You say they may attack as soon as tonight. Crap, we aren’t ready for this shit.”

  Shrugging, I said, “Your problem, not mine. I’ve wasted enough time with you. I have my own problems to deal with.”

  Turning to go, I heard something land on the ground behind me. A Hershey Bar skittered on the pavement past my legs.

  Stopping to look back, the man said, “That’s for warning us.”

  My thought was, ‘Cheap bastard, you should’ve had me wait while the other man went to fetch a carton of the bars.

  “Naw, I’m not touching it. You may be infected and not be showing.”

  Returning to my walk to Henderson, begrudging the hour and more wasted with the detour, I realized that the failed survivalists had inadvertently taught me something important. When making plans that required secrecy, no matter how secure you may feel in your surroundings, make the plans in whispers.

  My legs brought me to the final stretch of my walk, a walk during which not a single vehicle had passed me in either direction. I went by the county dump… almost decided to run past it because of a horrendous stench that permeated the air near it.

  I turned left at the corner onto the four-lane highway and in minutes, the sign for Main Street was in sight.

  The beginning of Main Street is void of structures for the first eighth-mile. When I reached the turn, I removed my backpack and sat on the pavement beside it. The first thing I removed from the pack was a small metal box holding four of the flimsy dust masks.

  I slid the elastic band over my head to seat the mask and mashed the thin aluminum strip to seal it to the shape of my nose. After that, I raised the seldom worn hood of my jacket into place, hoping that would provide a bit more protection against germs and viruses.

  The other thing I removed was a toy telescope, a cheap plastic one that had decent optics. I didn’t need to check my watch to know I had only an hour or so before sunset.

  Before starting up Main, I scanned the road and buildings within the focus of my scope. The snow made everything stand out with unnatural clarity. There was no one in view near the library or schools. Even at the limit of my telescope, I could see no one moving.

  I decided not to take Main, but to go further along the four-lane to the second right-hand turn. That turn would take me past the big Religious College that provided most of the economic lifeblood for the town. The campus of the college extended all the way to the midpoint of Main Street, which would put me near the business center and Government buildings.

  It was a long distance to that turn and besides getting darker, it was colder. I had a feeling it was going to be a very cold night.

  After scoping everywhere with my scope and seeing no one, I climbed a fence that bordered the college soccer field. An out of sight corner of the bleachers provided a place to camp.

  To my thinking, before sunrise was a good time to venture into town. Besides the early hour, the cold temperature should keep people indoors and give me privacy to check the pharmacy on Main Street, not far from the campus.

  The pop-up tent took only minutes to erect. I spread the provided ground tarp and rolled out my sleeping bag. With my blanket over my shoulder, I set one of Billy’s self-heating meals warming.

  Tired, worn from so many events including getting rip-roaring drunk the night before, my long day was over. I ate, crawled into my sleeping bag and fell asleep.

  ************

  I didn’t have trouble beating dawn, the roar and rattle of a large vehicle on the nearby four-lane took care of that. It sounded like it might be an old diesel eighteen-wheeler or maybe a dump truck, either way; it needed work on its exhaust system.

  My cheap digital watch didn’t have a light function. I had to unzip my sleeping bag to fish the LED light from my pack. The air that rushed into the bag confirmed my conjecture it would be a chilly night; it was freaking cold.

  I read 3:48, definitely an ungodly hour to be out of be
d, but out I crawled and shivered into my sweater and jacket. It was too early and too cold to bother eating.

  Outside of the tent, the wind forced me to pull my hood over my head to save my ears from freezing. My thin cloth-gloves were no match for the cold. With hands numbed within a minute, I rolled my sleeping bag and blanket and collapsed the tent. The wind would make it a miserable morning.

  My body wanted me to walk fast to build heat, but I had to go slow and watch for possible bodies of plague victims. I dang sure didn’t want to pass near one.

  There wasn’t a moon, but I didn't need an attention-getting flashlight. The undisturbed snow cover seemed to enhance the light of the stars. I stayed in the middle of the road because the snow made it hard to see the edge of the sidewalk.

  The lack of artificial light was weird and cast a sense of unreality to the night. Passing by the buildings of the college it was impossible to see anything through their glass doors. At the intersection with Main Street, I stood on the corner to look in both directions.

  To the left, because of the campus buildings adjacent to the street, there were no parked vehicles to obstruct my view. I saw no sign of life. To the right, there were a few vehicles parked against the curb on either side, some with their hoods raised, victims of the EMP. Seeing no movement, I shifted my view to the businesses across the street. They all had their own small parking lots and each held a few cars.

  Satisfied I had the immediate area to myself, I went to the right on main in the direction of the drugstore. Approaching the next corner I saw a snow covered lump on the pavement of the cross street. Closer, but swinging wide as I skirted by, the shape took on a human form, a dead person.

  The covering of snow made it impossible to determine sex. I don’t know how long the body had lain there, but I detected no odor. I wondered if the cold and the snow were affecting the gases of putrefaction. Perhaps if it were warmer the entire town would stink of rot.

  I arrived at the drugstore, one of several businesses fronting the sidewalk with no gaps between them. The glass entrance door was shattered. I didn’t go inside because even with dim starlight, just inside the opening I could see a dead man wearing a Henderson police uniform. Farther into the store were several more bodies. It looked to me there was a shootout involving the officer and looters. Packages from rummaged shelves littered the floor.

  I retracted my idea that cold suppressed odors. The stench coming from the opening, the exact stench I smelled at the dump, was strong. Maybe at the beginning of the plague there was an organized effort to remove bodies. A picture formed in my mind of a mountain of rotting bodies piled at the dump.

  Another picture formed, the dorms of the university filled with dead students. Those thoughts, combined with the odor of rotting flesh triggered my gag reflex, forced me to retreat further into the street to avoid puking into my mask.

  It was impossible. An entire town could not be dead. There must be people still alive, hunkered down, hiding… avoiding contact… there had to be… but the silence of the cold dark streets provided no evidence of that. The night seemed to close in around me. A shiver ran along my spine and I felt alone, isolated among the dead.

  For long moments, I stood in the middle of Main Street facing the shattered doorway of the drugstore. I had pinned my hope on this smallest of the towns pharmacies. I knew that the other two, both more popular were probably looted and full of the dead.

  I racked my brain. I knew that the Farmers Co-op had some medications, livestock antibiotics, wormers and such, but not the sort of meds written on the paper Bella gave me.

  I was at a loss as to how to fulfill my wish to provide for the Causley’s, not even snuff for Missus Smelts. With no other option, I continued on Main in the direction that would take me through the rest of the town back to the Four-lane, past groceries and gas stations and other businesses common to small towns, past the complex of county offices and the Urgent Care Center.

  Within a block, I began encountering more bodies to detour around, mostly on the sidewalk, but occasionally a plague stricken victim had wandered into the street to die. As usual, a number of the vehicles in sight had their hoods up. Something I found odd was twice I saw a dead person inside in a vehicle slumped over the steering wheel. I wondered if they were murdered or if they chose to die in their car. I wasn’t about to go close enough to investigate.

  Farther along the street, the familiar scent of rotting flesh tinged the air, growing stronger as I continued walking. In front of a grocery store, I encountered my first pile of bodies. It was a snow-covered mound, a wide, chest high pile of people.

  The cold and snow suppressed the odor of individual corpses, but the insulating factor of a pile of rotting meat overcame those factors. Observing the mound from a distance of thirty-feet, the covering of snow gave it a surrealistic aspect, an unreal quality, but shapes began to form and among the shapes were those of children and babies.

  Without warning, my stomach let go, filled my mask and nose with vomit that spewed from the edges onto my face until the weight and volume of it dragged my mask to dangle below my chin.

  The next, more violent regurgitation put me on my hands and knees to puke myself empty and beyond. Eventually I was able to rise. Ripped away the vomit filled mask hanging from its rubber band to my chest, held my hand over my mouth and turned from the grocery, wished with all my heart I was away from the town, wished that I’d never come.

  I stopped to don a new mask and then continued. The next, much bigger pile was in front of the Urgent Care Center. I stayed as far from it as I could, refused to let my gaze linger as I passed. Ahead, I could see the beginning of the school district. Past that, and a few small businesses was the library and then the Four-lane, The Four-lane was my mecca representing escape from the horror.

  The night wasn’t finished with me. Approaching one of the businesses, a convenience store with canopy covered fuel pumps, I saw my first live person. It was a small boy squatting just inside the closed door of the store. It was too far for me to see what he was doing, but my telescope brought him to me.

  He was eight or nine years old. With short brown hair, even with bloodshot eyes and plague rash on his face and arms, he was pretty. In his hands, he held the ravaged arm of a corpse lying on the floor beside him. I watched his face bury against the arm and his mouth pull a loose a chunk of meat.

  That is when I lost it, found myself running. Backpack slapping my back I ran past the library and the Farmer’s Co-op, ran to the highway and across all four lanes before I stopped.

  Hands on knees, drawing air not tainted with putridness, a GIF of boy’s mouth ripping flesh from a human arm rolled inside my mind, the horror amplified by his expression of contentment as he chewed. The boy wasn’t a zombie, just starving, probably brain-addled by the plague.

  I recovered, if the act of standing was recovery. My heart raced and I still drew deep gasping breaths. More than anything, I wanted my cabin.

  I pulled my mask over my head and tossed it, then used toilet paper and bottled water to clean the vomit from my face.

  I donned a fresh mask and took a couple of steps in the direction of the county dump, but something Billy said one afternoon when he was ranting about the government sprang into my mind.

  “Veterinarians take better care of animals than the fucking government does vets. Do you know animal doctors have the same medicines as hospitals? Hell yeah they do, and the operations are about the same. You don’t hear people talking about their beloved pet dying on the operating table from complications during surgery. Fucking veterinarians are better trained than human doctors.”

  I didn’t concern myself with the truism or not of his rant. What struck a chord was what he said about the medicines. If the medicines were the same, there was a veterinarian three miles from where I was. I turned around and slogged through slushy snow for one more try.

  The veterinarian’s office, west of the four-lane away from Henderson, was situated on acreage w
ithout a visible neighbor. It was a big, rambling house with several nearby barns and corrals. The sign that hung from a post near the road was gone. There were no vehicles in the gravel parking lot in front of it, but there was an SUV parked beside the house.

  Standing in the road observing it, the rising sun tinting its white paint pink, to me it looked like there was a possibility the Veterinarian might live there. Just in case he did, I went to the front entrance and pushed the doorbell button beside the door.

  A few seconds later, I realized that without electricity, the button wouldn’t work. I tried knocking, but my knuckles barely made noise on the wood. I used the handle of my knife to rap it a few quick hits and then sheaved the knife so if anyone came they wouldn’t get the wrong idea.

  I waited, waited long enough to decide it was time to find a way to break in, but a man shouted from inside, “Go away. I’m armed and I will kill you if you try to break in.”

  “No sir,” I shouted back, “I’m not going to try to break in. I came to see if you might have some medicine for some old people that need it.”

  “You sound like a kid. How old are you?”

  “I’m sixteen.”

  “You shouldn’t be out roaming. This plague’s a killer, very virulent, easy to catch.”

  “Yes sir, I know that, but the old man and woman need their medicine.”

  “Where’d you come from, girl?”

  “Finger, on past Sweetlips.”

  “Did you walk that?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Did you come through town?”

  “Yes sir. I did.”

  “There’s a good chance you picked up the virus.”

  My hand went to my respiration softened mask. “I’m wearing a dust mask. I could smell the dead people through it but I didn’t go near any of them.”

  “Well pray it protected you. The off gassing is just that, and is not infectious. A Bio-engineered weapon, that’s what it is, nasty way to die. Spreads fast and kills fast.

  “If you managed not to become infected, stay away from people. The virus will run out of vectors and die out, but it’ll take most of humanity with it. You’ll know in three days if you contracted it. You’ll know because you’ll feel it rotting your insides. As soon as you show symptoms you’ll infect anyone around you.”