CHAPTER 2

The Source watched in delight as New York city burned. He was sauntering along West Broadway, reveling in the chaos surrounding him. The virus had not worked instantaneously as planned, instead it was doing its job over an extended period. As he strolled down the sidewalk, fenced in by dead humans and the chaos that ensued upon their deaths, he was glad the virus had not worked to perfection. He would relish their prolonged suffering.

The Source had observed the virus working in stages, every couple minutes a new wave crowned, leaving bodies in its wake. The virus had been much less effective on human beings than his Creators intended. People would die, a brief time would elapse, and then more would die. The Source thought about what it would be like for those humans that didn’t die in the first wave and smiled; he knew, not personally, but understood, the terror they would feel. They would watch person after person collapse, never to take breath again. The disgusting meat sacks would panic as they were enveloped in his Creators’ handiwork.

A small girl, no more than 5 years old, stood a short distance before him, wandering aimlessly, unable to comprehend what was happening around her. She hugged a toy doll in her arms, her tear-filled eyes darting this way and that. He walked toward her with purpose now; his pace quick and decisive. The girl was lost and scared and she thought the nice man would help her.

The Source stopped before her and looked down upon her cherubic face. He bent over and wiped away the tears from each cheek. The girl stood motionless: he could sense her fear. It was palpable and his senses rose in excitement.

“Are you aware that you are a useless meat sack?” The Source’s voice was deep, yet grating on the nerves, like metal scratching on metal. “I would assume not.”

The little girl stared at him emptily, her bright green eyes wide open in fear. She didn’t think he was a nice man any more. She wanted to run away, but couldn’t.

The Source grew impatient with her blank stare and helplessness. He didn’t see the innocence in the little girl’s eyes; he didn’t feel the need to comfort her; the Source wouldn’t bring her to safety or give her words of comfort.

The Source had to remain hidden in human form since his creation. This allowed him to spread the virus covertly throughout his entire designated area. Now, for the first time since the first infection had occurred, the Source allowed a small piece of himself to emerge from his human costume. He pointed at the girl now, his thin index finger aimed at her forehead. The skin on the end of his finger split slowly, parting vertically, as his true self emerged from the vulgar human suit he had been forced to wear all these years. A jet-black, skeletal digit inched toward the little girl’s head with a moist, sucking sound as it separated from the organic human covering.

The little girl closed her eyes tight, not wanting to look at the scary man. She imagined she were home, safe under the covers of her bed. She liked to hide under the covers when the shadows crept along the walls of her bedroom at night; it made her feel safe.

There was no safety for her now; no covers would shield her from The Source. Soon the girl would slump to the ground as her mother had; not because of a virus like her mommy, but at the hands of The Orchestrator of Evil that walked the dying streets of New York City to see firsthand the benefits of his work.

Pain surged through my body in waves. My left side hurt from my ankle all the way to my neck. There was a stabbing in my left shoulder, and I hoped it wasn’t dislocated. My eyes stung. I blinked several times then stared at the dashboard; shards of glass and debris covered the inside of my car. As my mind started to change from unconsciousness to grogginess, I realized the car had flipped over and was resting on the roof. My full body weight was resting on my right shoulder and I squirmed to free myself from something holding my legs in place.

I craned my neck to see the seat had either slid forward or had been forced, either way my legs were caught between the seat and the steering wheel. I unbuckled my seat belt then kicked my legs to create some space. With a little effort, I plopped down to the car roof. Shards of glass cut into my hands and legs as I got on all fours and started to crawl out of the busted driver side window.

I slid out of the wreck and gingerly stood up. I could tell easily what had happened: after the impact, my car had slid to the shoulder and rolled over in the soft gravel. I was now standing in a culvert on the side of the road. I had been hit by a white utility van and it was in the middle of the intersection. Smoke trickled from underneath the hood and the engine popped and hissed. The windshield was missing and what appeared to be blood, was smeared all over the hood.

My left ankle was sprained, but not bad, and I hobbled to get a better look at the van. I wasn’t sure if the driver had survived the crash or if they had just gone to sleep like everyone else seemed to be. My left shoulder hurt like hell, but it wasn’t dislocated. I held it close to my side just the same as the stabbing pain hurt more every time I moved my arm.

I walked out of the culvert and could see the road clearly. I looked all around for the driver, but couldn’t see any signs of whomever had been piloting the van. I didn’t have a clue what to do and was probably in shock, but I doubled back to my car and got the keys from the ignition. I wasn’t sure why I felt grabbing them would be so important.

As I walked past the culvert and approached my car, I could see something in the short grass on the other side of my car: it was a person’s hand. I hadn’t noticed it initially because I had crawled away in the opposite direction.

I walked around my car and a man’s body was a few feet on the other side in the grass field. His white overalls were covered with paint of all colors as well as a recent coating of blood. He was face down in the grass, which suited me just fine. I didn’t need to see another dead person’s face. I shuffled over to check his pulse and as I got closer I stopped – his right arm was missing from the elbow down. Where his forearm and hand should have been, was a mess of stringy flesh and exposed bone.

I turned away as quick as I could and kept my mind focused on grabbing my keys. I’ll need them to get into the house, I thought to myself. You don’t have a spare key Clay and you’re in no shape to be climbing through any windows. Get those keys. Forget about the rest. Get the keys and go home where it’s safe. So, I gave into my inner voice and took the keys out of the ignition then started walking down Central Street toward my home where I thought it would be safe.

Pinebush had always been a quiet town – your typical Small Town, USA kind of place. I loved Pinebush as a kid, but as I got older (and my old man’s beatings became recurrent and more severe) my love for my hometown became bittersweet. As much as I thought about leaving for good, I could never break out of my comfort zone and go through with it. Even when my father died the summer after I graduated high school - leaving me his house and more internal and external scars than I could count, but not much else - I couldn’t leave. The people were good to me in Pinebush; they were like the family I wanted. Especially Hunter Ragland, who owned a small deli around the corner from my house and who was the closest thing I had to a friend. Mr. Ragland was my father’s age and had opened the deli when I was in middle school. Mr. Ragland was the nicest person I knew. He was even nice to my father and no one bothered being nice to my father; no one except the bar flies and the liquor store owner.

I started working for Mr. Ragland a few hours a week when I turned fifteen. I had been trying to get a job there for years, but Mr. Ragland insisted I focused on school and came to him when I was of legal working age. I was hired on December 27th, 1987 – the day I turned 15. The deal was I started working one hour each day during the week and five hours on Saturday. At the end of the next school term I had to bring in my report card. If my grades didn’t slip Mr. Ragland would talk to me about more hours. When the term ended in January, I brought in my report card and when my grades hadn’t declined from the previous term Mr. Ragland agreed to let me work more during the week. He even gave me a $50 bonus for my grades. This went on through high school and when I graduated Mr. Ragland threw me a party at his house. He even catered it for free.

When my father died, it had been Hunter that helped me the most. He often had me over for dinner with his family and gave me full time hours at the deli until I decided I wanted to be a mechanic. I hated to leave his employ, but I wanted more than sweeping floors and making sandwiches and Mr. Ragland knew that. I still stopped in every morning to get my coffee and talk with him while I had a cigarette and he had a smoke on his pipe. He always poked fun at me for smoking cigarettes. “A fool’s smoke,” he used to say.

Pinebush was burning.

I could see the smoke rising toward the cloudy sky as I approached the outskirts of town. I had passed the stretch of farmland and had rounded a curve in the road when I noticed the beginnings of smoke coming from town. I tried to run, but my ankle sprain held me to a hurried walk. I heard several loud crashes, most likely more car accidents, and numerous people shouting.

I got closer to the downtown area of Pinebush called Main Street. The smoke I had seen was coming from the House of Pizza. It was on fire and flames had engulfed the entire building. Cars were all over the road, some had crashed into buildings or other cars while others had rolled off the road entirely. There were people laying in the road and the sidewalk. I didn’t want to get a close look at any of them, for fear of recognizing someone, so I took wide paths around the bodies in the road. I didn’t look at any of the drivers in the cars for the same reason.

Jeannie Thompson, a waitress at the House of Pizza was on the road, her head flattened and undistinguishable. If it wasn’t for the nametag on her uniform I wouldn’t have known who it was. She had been run over by a car, which had come to a stop a short distance beyond her and left a tire imprint of blood for several feet. I looked away and continued down Main Street.

I walked past several stores and got closer to the House of Pizza, where I stopped and watched in awe. The entire restaurant was a raging fire and it was spreading. The post office next door had started to catch fire. What do I do? Call the fire department? I was lost and without direction. In my dazed state, I walked home, not knowing how to help.

Someone yelled from the alleyway behind me. I turned and saw an older woman, someone I recognized but couldn’t remember exactly. She was sitting on one of the wooden benches that lined Main Street. I walked toward her and she waved me over. I had taken a couple steps when her arm dropped lifelessly and she dropped forward onto the sidewalk face first. Something told me to see if she was okay, but a louder internal voice told me to keep walking. She was dead and there wasn’t anything I could do, so I left her behind and walked toward my house.

I was at the end of Main Street, when I stopped in front of Ragland’s Deli. I looked on helplessly as the flames from the spreading inferno started licking at the deli like a snake’s tongue. Soon the deli started to catch fire and I had enough wits to run inside and make sure Mr. Ragland wasn’t there, or was at least inside and still breathing. I burst through the front door and surveyed the tiny deli and convenience store.

Ragland’s store consisted of a small deli case and counter to the left, where the register and quick selling items like scratch tickets and cigarettes were. Directly in front of the door were two aisles containing snacks and canned goods. Along the back of the store were coolers housing beer, soda, and other beverages. There was someone on the floor, looking like they had settled in for a good afternoon nap, and I recognized Trevor Ludlow, a former high-school classmate. I went straight for the counter, thinking if Mr. Ragland was injured or worse, he’d be behind the register or the deli counter as usual.

I rounded the counter and there he was, slumped in a sitting position on the floor with his back to the glass deli display. I ran to Mr. Ragland then stopped, staring at him absently, unsure of what my next action should be, then reached out and checked for a pulse in his neck. There was no pulse and I doubled checked his wrist – nothing. Smoke started to creep through the wall behind me and I started to feel the heat of the fire outside trying to force its way through the walls.

I wanted to get Hunter out of the shop before the fire got to him. I tried to lift him over my shoulder to carry him out. My shoulder cried out in pain, telling me it wouldn’t be possible to carry the load. After I failed to hoist him three times, I grabbed him by the wrist and started to pull him out of the store. The worn tile was still slick enough that I could slide him along and within a minute I had Mr. Ragland’s body outside his shop. I continued pulling him over the sidewalk and into the street then watched the inferno gorge on the deli and continue to spread.

As I stood over Hunter’s corpse, the fire wrapped its arms around several more buildings up and down Main Street. Soon five different buildings were either burned down or fast being consumed by the flames. I regarded the carnage with utter disbelief, like what was happening to my hometown was something one would watch on a movie screen. The smoke started to tickle the back of my throat and it wasn’t long before coughing shook me from my stupor.

My house was just around the corner from the deli, in fact there were two houses between my home and the ever-growing fire slithering down Main Street. I sprang into action and started jogging toward my home. I knew it wouldn’t be long before the blaze would open its maw to swallow my home like it had the other buildings in its wake.

I unlocked my front door, thankful I had remembered my keys, and ran into the bedroom. I grabbed my father’s old Army duffel bag and started cramming clothing in. In a breathless panic, I started pacing around the house filling the canvas bag with anything I thought would be needed. Most of it was useless, but I had enough rushed intelligence to grab several lighters, my last carton of cigarettes, and a few snacks kicking around in my cabinets.

I was working my way through the kitchen and looked out the side window, where I saw smoke filling my neighbor’s living room. It wasn’t long before I saw flames working up the walls and I kicked my packing into high gear. Move your ass Clay, I said to myself and heeded my own advice. Within a couple minutes I had the duffel stuffed like a sausage casing and stood in the middle of the street while my neighbor’s roof caved in and a burst of renewed fire roared skyward. It wouldn’t be long before my house, a mere ten feet away from the fire thanks to high-density residential planning, would become the next victim of the massive conflagration.

I secured the duffel bag over my shoulder and walked away as the heat tapped me on the shoulder. Smoke burning my lungs caused more than one coughing fit. I had lost everything in a matter of thirty minutes: my home, my work, my friends, my community. Everything was gone. I doubled back to where Main Street became Central Street once more and walked toward the edge of town. I didn’t know where I would go or what I would do next, but I did know there was nothing left for me in Pinebush – nothing other than heartbreak and a loss I could only cope with by leaving it behind as I walked away.

I walked to the edge of town and looked for a vehicle that could take me wherever it was I decided to go. Most of the vehicles I came across had dead bodies in them, and I wasn’t up to removing a previous owner and confiscating their vehicle just yet, but knew it would most likely come to that.

Central Street became US Route 2 which goes through Old Town and Orono and eventually into Bangor. That was where I decided stop first and most likely for the night. It was only about forty-five minutes away, depending on any road blocks. I wasn’t sure why I determined Bangor would be my first stop. I was simply going on instinct at this point, letting the road lead me by the hand.

I was numb, devoid of emotion. Adrenaline still steered my actions. I had stopped thinking except for the most basic of human needs – I sought the safety and familiarity of home. Now that was gone. I had nothing, no one. My life was gone.

Fifty yards down the road was a black SUV with the driver’s door open. A woman’s body was on the ground, one leg rested on the floor inside the vehicle. It was the only vehicle in sight and I had no intention of walking to Bangor. The only thing within miles was my hometown, and that was consumed by flames.

I approached the car with apprehension and decided to enter through the passenger side rather than stepping over the body. The doors were locked, forcing me to face the unwanted prospect of removing the woman’s body. I noticed the New Hampshire license plate as I rounded the vehicle. I wouldn’t know this woman and something about that allowed me to detach just a little.

I tried not to look, but my eyes didn’t receive the message sent by my brain. The woman was young, perhaps in her early 30s, and my first thought was she looked like a mother. Something about a woman becoming a mother changes how they look, at least I always thought so. She seemed nurturing, comforting, even in death. The woman appeared to be taking an awkward nap on the side of the road.

Then I noticed the blood: in her dirty blond hair that was matted to her forehead, on her white blouse, now stained red and barely noticeable underneath her maroon cardigan. There was a stream of blood running from a deep wound along her right temple to the asphalt below, where it collected in a small pool.

Just get out of here, I thought to myself.

I reached out and delicately withdrew her foot from the floor of the SUV before attempting to get into the driver’s seat. The duffel bag over my shoulder jammed against the side of the vehicle. I cursed myself under my breath and stepped around the woman. I hit the unlock button on the door several times for good measure and walked to the rear of the SUV, where I dropped my duffel bag before finally getting in the car in a rush.

Reality was creeping toward me now. I was getting glimpses: dead eyes, blackened veins, blood, death. I became very cold and shivered. I sped off hoping to leave reality behind.

Driving had always been a way of clearing my head, as if the open road was a form of meditation. In fact, I had a bad habit of nodding off when driving along the monotonous, tree-lined back roads of Maine more than I could count. I didn’t know how many times I had to pull over and nap, or even resort to turning on air conditioning in the middle of winter just to keep myself from falling asleep at the wheel.

I was driving along Route 2, when I glanced in the rear-view mirror. Nausea washed over me and my hands started to shake. I pulled the vehicle over at once and got out of the car. I started to hyperventilate.

“Oh Jesus…don’t look…just…don’t…look…back,” I said out loud in between short, panicked breaths.

In the back row of the SUV was a baby in a safety seat, my best guess was no more than a few months old. I looked away in horror and tried to force the baby’s image from my mind: a blue sweater with a yellow duck sewn into the chest, a full head of soft, unkempt light hair, sleeping peacefully…or so I hoped.

I should make sure. Please be asleep.

I had to know if the child was indeed dead. He could be sleeping. Maybe he was a deep sleeper.

He’s just sleeping…taking a nap.

I leaned over the center console and reached out slowly to touch the baby’s skin, caught between wanting to know and fearing the worst. How long before a dead body goes cold? Of all the things I had read in my life, the decay rates of an infant boy hadn’t been one of the things I’d researched. I wasn’t a father, and being an only child, I didn’t have any nieces or nephews to dote over. I knew as much about children as I did about particle physics, maybe even less.

As my hand got closer I held my breath and grazed the top of the child’s hand.

Was it warm? Must’ve been…I’d have noticed if it was cold.

I reached out again, this time with more determination, and touched the boy’s hand. It was still warm, but what did that mean? How would I know if he were dead? I tapped him on the hand several times. No response. I gently pinched the top of his hand. No response.

I had no idea how to proceed. I thought about checking for a pulse, but had no idea if I could muster enough courage to continue probing at the boy’s body. In fact, I had no idea how to take a child’s pulse. I remembered something about not checking their neck, as you would on an adult, but had no idea how to proceed beyond what not to do.

Without thinking or knowing why, I slapped the boy across the face, much harder than I intended. His head slumped to his right and he remained unmoving. He was dead.

I stared at the boy for some time. At first, my mind was clear. I wasn’t feeling or thinking. I was in a state of comfortable ignorance you could say. Then everything hit me again, the images, all at once and more vigorous and impactful than before. I cried, not sure how long. It didn’t matter anyway. There was nothing left.

I would never share a smoke with Hunter Ragland outside his store. I would never go to work. I would never laugh at Carbie’s antics. I would never go home. I would never sit in my chair and enjoy the peaceful solitude. No more neighbors. No more friends. There was nothing left of me.

Before I left town, I wanted to bring the boy to be with his mother. I assumed their relationship to be as such or at the very least they had been together before they died. I would see they were together in death as well. It was important for me to show that last sign of respect. I drove back to where the woman lay in the road and placed the boy on her chest, wrapping her lifeless arms around his tiny body. I wasn’t a religious man. I didn’t know any specific prayers, but I prayed over them in my own way. I wished for them to find eternal tranquility. They slept peacefully, forever and together, as I drove away.

Next Chapter: Chapter 3 - The Clay Pachyderm