Tristan rose at five a.m. and hit the gym for an hour and a half before heading out for a circuit in the Jeep. His route took him about a hundred miles around in a projection that would bring him back to the base. He stopped at the different areas where there were pull-offs and wrote down what he observed. He was in a mood. He wanted to write down ‘herd of deer’ because that’s all he saw but, instead, wrote that the fracking site was all-clear, meaning no environmentalist hippies trying to blow the place up. Some of the sites had workers moving around, making adjustments to equipment or also checking to make sure things were running smoothly. He could always tell who the workers were: they wore bright yellow, reflective vests and hardhats. Sometimes the suits showed up, too. The company executives trying to be cool like one of the little guys with a safety hat on. The Army had some of those types, too. Go figure.
He had sixteen such check-points plus the two refineries and the power plant on his loop. The power plant would come after lunch. Around noon, he stopped for lunch in town, a small local diner in the square that served good, homecooked food. He ordered the turkey club and sat at the counter.
Someone behind him at a booth was gossiping, the usual neighborhood stuff. First, it was “Fred got a new truck,” then it was “Margie just retired,” then “And did you hear? Sally Cummings just passed. Yes, got that flu that’s going around.”
This part piqued his interest, and Tristan stopped drinking his iced tea to listen.
“And the whole Sinclair family’s down with it, too,” the elderly lady was saying. “Jess Turnbow’s daughter has it, too.”
Out of his peripheral vision, Tristan saw two older men walk past him to join the conversation at the booth. Soon, they were all recounting the people they knew or had heard of who were sick or were now deceased from it.
“And Joe Donnelly? He up and beat on that young law clerk workin’ for him. Damn shame. He damn near beat that kid to death. Sheriff’s department got called in to help on that one. City police were already dealing with two others, newcomers who just moved here.”
“Probably who brought this flu to our town,” someone speculated.
Tristan knew that a lot of small towns like this thought of people who’d just moved in as newcomers. It was certainly no reason to be so suspicious, but he understood how people who’d never lived anywhere but the same small town they were raised in would think like that. Not him. He had no roots anywhere. He liked it that way, too, and couldn’t wait to get out of this town.
“And the one Mike was called to was first thought to be domestic violence…”
“Here’s your turkey club,” the waitress offered with a smile. At least she was friendly. Of course, he probably tipped better than the locals. Same as all the ‘outsiders.’ He thanked her, and she left.
The conversation was still ongoing. The name ‘Mike’ came up again, and he figured it out that he worked for the city as a cop.
“Wife stabbed the husband to death with, guess what?” a woman asked in a conspiratorial tone. “A screwdriver.”
Tristan flinched. That would’ve been a mess.
“She was trying to kill their two kids, but the children- bless their little hearts- were hiding from her in the mini-van in the garage. Can you believe that?”
“Terrible, I tell ya’,” a man said.
“And Marlene Winkler? She said her neighbor tried to hurt his wife, so she locked him out and called the police. They took him away in one of those straight jacket things.”
“The whole world’s goin’ crazy.”
“And I know I saw someone trying to get into my neighbor’s house the other night, so I called it in. Now, I know what ya’ll are thinkin’. I’ve had a few false alarms before, but this time I know I saw someone. He was all bent over and acting strangely, mumbling to himself like he was on drugs or something. He was trying their door, then the garage door. They’re on vacation in Florida, go down there every year…”
Tristan tuned out and ate more of his sandwich while she availed everyone of her neighbor’s yearly stay in Florida for the winter. Then she went on to talk about their kids and their grandchildren. Good grief. He wanted just to tell her to get to the point.
“Well, anyways, he was tryin’ to break in. I called Mike, but he didn’t get there in time. Guy got away. Mike said they’d keep lookin’ for him. Told me they’ve had some problems with people like that lately.”
“Probably those frackers got some bad drugs. You know they all do drugs,” one of the other women said as if that made sense. Tristan had never had any experiences with the oil workers that would lead him to think any of them did drugs. They all seemed to take their work seriously and were very hard workers doing difficult jobs.
“Just last night there was a call came in,” another man with a gravelly voice said. “Heard it on my scanner. That weird family, what’s their name? Live on Meadowbrook Lane. Damn, what’s their name? Right, the Andersson’s. Now I remember. That’s who it was. Heard their oldest daughter called the sheriff about something on the road chased her or something like that. Crazy.”
Tristan’s heart sank into the pit of his stomach. Andersson’s on Meadowbrook Lane? It had to be Avery’s family. She was the oldest. Avery had called the police? Somebody was chasing her? He set his sandwich down. If she was in trouble, why hadn’t she called him? Of course, she wasn’t going to call him. Why would she? That was a stupid reaction on his part. And why did the man call her family ‘weird’- that was rude. Maybe these local yuck-yucks weren’t worth defending, after all. They guys at the base said they didn’t like them, but Tristan tried to give people the benefit of the doubt. That benefit was now revoked.
“What was it?” one of the older women said.
“Don’t know. Took ‘em so long to get there, whatever it was had run off.”
“Coyote?” a man asked.
“Don’t know,” he repeated.
“Those people are odd if you ask me,” a woman said. “Don’t send their children to school. I heard a long time ago from Annie Stephens they all run around there like total heathens. Don’t know how school ever gets done. And their father? Where’s he even from? They’re just strange. Children should be in a school where they belong, not roaming the countryside like a bunch of hooligans.”
“Well, I don’t know how their mother could call herself a psychiatrist and allow her children to behave like that.”
This was all news to Tristan. Dr. Andersson was a psychologist, not a psychiatrist. And her children, the one he met, seemed intelligent and mannerly and kind. And drop dead gorgeous. And kind. Avery was a kind person, conscientious of her actions and words and thought before she spoke. Probably a little too trusting. He hadn’t slept much the past two nights remembering her permitting him into her apartment wearing only a silky robe and what he could only imagine as nothing else. The outline of her soft curves was very apparent. Sleep really hadn’t been coming to him lately, not since he met her. And now someone had chased her down? He was starting to wonder if he should offer his services as a personal security advisor. Or just her bodyguard. That would work, too.
He finished his sandwich, left enough money for the bill and a generous tip. Tristan rose and went to the table full of gossips. He couldn’t stop himself even if he wanted to. All six sets of eyes shot up to his.
“The public school system in this country is shit. All of the Andersson kids are super geniuses who would be bored in your local schools because most of them are already taking college courses. And Dr. Andersson is a clinical psychologist with a Ph.D., not a psychiatrist. If you’re gonna gossip, get your facts straight.”
And with that, he left to the sounds of “Well, I never!”. He chuckled as he got in the Jeep and drove off. Let them stew on that for a while instead of dwelling on making shit up about the Andersson’s.
He hit the coffee shop and drove out of town to the refinery, pulling off the road onto the hidden path the military and oil refinery security guards used to look down over the whole plant. Tristan parked on the path and got out, stretching his legs.
To his right was an open field of overgrown grass and weeds. Straight ahead about a hundred and fifty yards away was an endless forest, or so it seemed. It hadn’t been timbered in recent years because the trees were dense and huge. To his left was a steep hill, dropping probably three or four hundred yards to a lower basin where the plant was located.
He pulled out his binoculars to scan the area carefully, slowly. There was a deer about fifty yards away without a care in the world that he was there. He’d never been hunting before, not animals. He’d never killed a deer or rabbit or squirrel. He did have to shoot a horse once. It was during a trek through the mountains of Afghanistan looking for a high-value target the government had their sites set on. Their guide’s horse slipped on the loose gravel of a steep path, stepped in a crevasse as a result, and broke its ankle. Nobody else in their unit had the heart to put the suffering animal down. Naturally, Tristan stepped forward. That was the way it usually went, too. He was the hammer when nails needed to get pounded in.
Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. It sounded far off. This refinery was about five miles from the nearest home, probably some government regulation or another.
Tristan turned in the other direction and spied on the operations of the plant. He watched as a train pulled to a slow stop along the tracks at the back of the plant. The air brakes blew a loud burst of noise into the air. Steam spilled from some of the tall towers of the refinery’s operation. A constant flame rose from another. It reminded him of the tomb of the unknown soldier.
“Ha, that’ll be you, bub,” he said to himself.
When he died, nobody would even notice. He had a few friends in the Army, but Tristan was a loner. People were too damned complicated. Friendships, relationships, romantic ones especially, none of it worked in the end. Allowing himself to be vulnerable? No, thanks. He didn’t grow up with anyone caring about him, and he’d go out someday the same way. Not leaving a mark, no hint that he was even here. It was a good way to go, in his opinion.
The sounds of a siren, an ambulance if he were guessing right, was coming down the main road. It grew louder and louder, the sound more and more grating on his nerves with every screaming whine. He turned just in time to see it speeding by.
Suddenly, six dogs flew out of the underbrush and were running straight toward him.
“What the fuck?” he said, lurching backward and then running for the Jeep.
Packs of wild dogs were no joke. These were clearly just that. There were a few smaller ones, but most were huge and definitely big enough to ban together and take him down.
He opened his door and jumped in, fully expecting a Cujo moment at any second. Tristan stared out his window as the dogs ran around the Jeep, splitting up. He threw himself toward the passenger side to spy out that window next. The dogs surprised him by keeping going. They weren’t after him at all. They just kept going as if they were in some sort of long-distance race. Odd.
Since the area, other than the dogs, was free and clear of danger, he fired up the Jeep and turned around in the open field beside it. He drove to the plant to see if they needed help. He wasn’t sure what the ambulance was all about, but it had pulled into the refinery’s entrance, which would indicate a workplace accident. Jonah was on duty again at the gate as Tristan rolled to a stop.
“Hey, Sergeant Driscoll,” Jonah greeted.
“Everything okay, man? What’s with the EMT’s?”
Tristan could see three ambulances parked near two sheriff deputies’ cruisers. All had their lights still swirling but not their sirens. He didn’t like the sound of sirens or air horns, or air raid systems. It made him a little edgy. He wasn’t going to go off and start shooting people on a psychotic breakdown, but it just brought back bad memories of when he was in Turkey for three months. Whenever the locals thought the Americans were coming into their towns, they’d run those damn air raid sirens. Tristan lost two of his friends in a firefight against a crazy Islamic dictator’s caliphate regime army of equally nutty extremists. He thought that bullshit was squelched forty years ago by President Trump bombing the hell out of Istanbul when they started their shit around 2022, but where one turd left off the next started. Those air raid sirens went on for three straight days during fighting and about drove Tristan and his fellow soldiers crazy. Now when he heard a siren, if it didn’t end quickly, it brought him back to the night where both of his friends were killed within minutes of each other. That was the last time he made close friends in the military. The Turks learned their lesson, though. Again. Don’t fuck with America.
“It’s crazy, bro’,” Jonah relayed. “Man, one of the pipefitters got into it with another one. Started cracking him over the head with a big pipe wrench.”
“Really? Wow, who pissed in his Cheerios?”
“Don’t know, man. This shit’s gettin’ crazy around here, ya’ feel me?”
“Why? What do you mean?”
“Yesterday, Tom- he’s the foreman on nightshift- he got all pissed off and crazy like.”
“How?”
He shrugged and explained, “Day before he was puking up his guts, had fevers. Ya’ know, like the flu or something like they were talkin’ about on the t.v. I thought it was just getting kids. Guess not. But then he came into work. He went to his office, said he was gonna lay down ‘cuz he felt like shit. Came out like four hours later and started stabbin’ Jerry with a knife from the break room.”
“Jesus,” Tristan swore and felt his palms grow sweaty.
“Jerry died before the paramedics got here. State Troopers came and took Tom away.”
“Stateys? That’s unusual.”
“Yeah, this ain’t their jurisdiction. This is a county property, county matter. Sheriff’s people should be handling this shit.”
“That is odd.”
“That was last night. Now this shit. What the hell, man?”
“Yeah, crazy,” he said. “You hear of anyone else getting this flu shit going around?”
“Couple kids in the grade school, couple more in high school, one of the teachers,” he told Tristan. “My aunt in Alabama’s got it. My uncle’s going outta’ his mind worrying about her. She’s been in the ICU for a week.”
“That’s too bad, Jonah.”
“Yeah, well, he’s a neurosurgeon,” he said, surprising Tristan. “He’s a damn doctor, and his own wife’s got it. He told my old man last night- that’s his brother- that there’s two strains. One makes ya’ sick. Usually kills ya’. That’s what the fuck she’s got, so it don’t look good. He even said that if he wasn’t a doctor at the hospital down there that they wouldn’t have put her in the ICU. They’re overbooked and understaffed.”
He rambled about his relatives for a few minutes, but they both looked on as the police hauled a man out of the building near where their cruiser was parked. He was hogtied and screaming in a rage, ranting incoherently.
As they pulled away, Tristan tipped his ball cap to the officer driving, who returned it with a grave nod. Then he turned his attention back to Jonah.
“What were you saying about two different types of flu?” he asked, wanting to know what a legitimate doctor was saying and not some crackpot on the internet.
“Oh, yeah,” he said, his gaze coming back to Tristan. “He said the other flu out there is way worse. The first one either kills you or it don’t. But the new one…it…I don’t know, man….he said it’s causing people to act like psychopathic serial killers or some shit. He was tellin’ my old man, who put the phone on speaker, but I didn’t understand most of what they were saying. Medical mumbo-jumbo and shit.”
“Serial killers?”
“Yeah, he said they start havin’ fevers and feeling real sick like the flu, but the fevers go so high. Medicine don’t work. He said he thinks the reason people are becoming nutso with it is because the fevers are causing damage to the brain, the frontal lobe or some such. I don’t know. Who knows, right? All I know is I don’t want that shit. If it don’t get better soon, I’m buggin’ out.”
“Bugging out?”
“Yeah, my family’s got a cabin on the lake in New York. That’s where we’ll be heading. I ain’t stickin’ around till I get it.”
“Sounds like a good idea. But I wouldn’t panic just yet. I’m sure the government will come up with a vaccine or something soon.”
“No, he said they tried. That’s why we got this second strain R-something or other. I can’t remember.”
Tristan knew the initials but let Jonah go.
“My uncle said that the first flu virus was bad, woulda’ probably killed millions, so they hurried up and came up with a vaccine against it. But that went bad. He said it was something viruses do sometimes to protect themselves from going extinct. You ever hear of somethin’ like that?”
He shook his head in solidarity but knew what his uncle was talking about.
“Crazy shit, man. He said the virus changed and got even worse. Now, most folks could get one or the other. That ain’t gonna be me, brother.”
“Yeah, let’s hope it’s not either of us.”
“He said not to go out in the public no more without a mask and gloves. We’re all gonna walk around lookin’ like paranoid idiots if we do that. I mean, fuck, it’s only September. The flu don’t usually go around till the middle of winter. Nobody’s gonna believe us if we say we’re wearing a mask out in public ‘cuz of the flu.”
Tristan was starting to think that might not be a bad idea actually. He’d rather look stupid than dead. But he still wasn’t sure if it was full-blown panic dig a bunker in the side of a hill time yet. He prided himself on being level headed. He didn’t want to be a tin-foil hat wearer just yet, but it was starting to get intense.
“Well, hey, man,” he said, “mind if I take a look around? I don’t think I need to report this, but just in case they wanna’ know.”
“Yeah, sure. No problem, Tristan,” he said.
Tristan nodded to his friend and pulled in as the EMT workers were wheeling a man on a stretcher out. Then another set of people were pushing another person out on a stretcher, as well, but the body was in a black vinyl bag and zipped all the way to the top, covering the head. He parked and went up the three metal stairs of the long white building. Inside, he had to press up against the wall and stand out of the way to let another set of emergency workers push another stretcher past him. The man lying on it was a bloody mess, his face nearly unrecognizable, and they were bagging him with oxygen. Tristan had seen men injured in war like that. Some of them were his friends.
A few other workers were standing around talking about the incident, which sounded pretty much the same as Jonah described it. Other than the fact that obviously more than one person had been attacked, and apparently, at least one had died. So far.
“Where did the incident take place?” he asked a woman standing nearby. She was wearing uniform overalls and had her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. She was tall and looked strong. He was under no impression that she worked here as a secretary. She looked as hard and tough as the men. Except, like her coworkers standing around talking, she was haunted and disturbed by what she’d seen. She pointed down the hall without saying a word, to which he nodded and thanked her. They were all used to seeing the presence of the Army on their grounds.
Tristan kept going down the long white hall, passing by a few small offices and a breakroom as he went. The area opened up to a large warehouse with compressor systems, loud machines with which he wasn’t familiar, and grated walkways. It was a complex system. It was slightly darker, too, but it didn’t take Tristan long to find where the accident took place. All he had to do was follow the trail of blood. It was on the railings, the grated walkways, and the concrete floor where there was one. Reminding him of a crime scene, the place looked like the site of a murder or a damn bloodbath massacre.
He left the plant, jotted down some notes about the incident when he got back to the base, and turned in for the night. Freddie was gone, probably out with Royce and Spencer as they were most nights. Spencer had snagged digits from that Renee chick, the dreadlocked free spirit friend of Avery’s. That was a weird friendship, like ying and yang. But Spencer had actually taken her out on a date the other night. A date. What the hell?
He ate a frozen food entrée for dinner and went to his room where his laptop was located. For the next few hours, Tristan did some research on this flu. Everything out there about it seemed either far-fetched, made up completely, or conspiracy theory freaks trying to get attention. One dude with blue hair said it was an end-times plague and everyone was going to hell. Not likely. He’d been to hell. This was nothing like that.
While streaming some of the videos, he sipped a Coke and polished off the rest of Avery Andersson’s amazing chocolate chip cookies. They were maybe the best he’d ever had without a doubt, hands-down. He was ready to offer a marriage proposal. Unfortunately, she’d packed him over a dozen just for him, and he had now eaten all of them in the span of less than a week. When the last one had been eaten, he prepared to throw the empty box in his trashcan, but a note caught his eye that he hadn’t seen before taped to the underside of the lid.
Dear Mr. Driscoll,
Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I am indebted to you. Your actions prevented me from being harmed, and for that, I am truly grateful, indeed. You went above and beyond the call of duty and put your own safety aside to come to my aid. I know a few cookies could not possibly repay you for also taking me to the hospital that night, but please accept them with my most sincere gratitude.
Your friend,
Avery Andersson
P.S. if you ever tell anyone about the teepee, I may have to murder you.
Tristan laughed loudly to the room. Then he reread it and sobered. Jesus, was she trying to recommend him for the Medal of Honor? It wasn’t that big of a deal. He only stepped in to stop a psycho from…from what? He still wasn’t sure about that yet. The jury was still out. And driving her to the hospital? That wasn’t a big deal, either. Of course, he was going to drive her to the hospital. Anyone would’ve in that situation. Wouldn’t they? Avery Andersson was obviously not used to being treated with respect or, if he was stretching a little, chivalry. Damn. That actually pissed him off to consider that. She deserved so much more. If the way the townies talked about her was any indication of the way she was used to being treated, then Tristan hoped the whole town caught this end-times plague-flu.
He read the letter again, admiring her delicate and elegant penmanship. Of course, she would have nice handwriting. Anything less would’ve been the true surprise. She reminded him a lot of her mother in that way- classy, elegant, always on point. But Avery was different from her, too. He didn’t feel the same way about Dr. Andersson as he did when he was around her gorgeous daughter, who could’ve modeled swimsuits for Sports Illustrated and always seemed a little mussed, a little nervous and flushed, a little too sexy for her own good.
Tossing the letter in his desk drawer to keep it away from prying eyes and to stop himself from rereading it, Tristan stood up to clear his head. He pounded out a hundred push-ups and did pull-ups using the bar across the top of the doorframe to his bathroom. Weighted lunges were last. Somehow, he felt a little better about eating so many damn cookies. Without a doubt the best cookies he’d ever eaten. Also, the best letter he’d ever received, too.
He finally turned in but first locked his door, which he never did. Freddie was out, and he didn’t want just anyone walking into his room. Especially if they were carrying a pipe wrench or a kitchen knife.
Tristan couldn’t sleep for a long time. His mind bounced from the terror at the refinery plant to Avery Andersson possibly being in true danger last night. The fact that he wasn’t there last night to help her this time really bothered him for some reason. She was too naïve, too innocent. For God’s sake, she still lived at home for all intents and purposes. She was homeschooled. Had never lived on her own somewhere other than home. The most risk she had taken in her life was being friends with Renee.
He took a second to send a request to the man upstairs, who probably wouldn’t even give it a second glance. But he wanted to think that someone was going to watch over her. Tristan needed to stay away from her, never see her again. Nothing good could ever possibly come of it. That didn’t mean he wanted her left unattended. Obviously, that wasn’t a good idea for her.
Tristan dreamed that night about the firefight with the air raid sirens going off and his friends being in it with him. This time, however, Two-Shakes, his best friend, came at him with a pipe wrench while Benny, his other friend he’d lost that day, held a kitchen knife to Avery Andersson’s throat. They were both mumbling strange words that weren’t quite words. He couldn’t make them stop, and the worst part was that he couldn’t get to her.