Tristan talked to the LT. He wasn’t happy about the news. Not because the sheriff hadn’t sent over a report, but that two of the men under his care were murdered by a civilian. The military had to conduct their own investigation into the crime scene, and now it was all ruined. The bodies were gone, the evidence tampered with and trampled on. He still took a report from Tristan and said he was going to call it in.
Then he had to tell his lieutenant that Spencer was in the hospital, too.
“Goddammit,” he swore. “I’ve got six other men out.”
Tristan asked him if he knew about this flu and if so, what he knew exactly.
“So, you know about it?” Tristan confirmed after his LT told him that he was familiar.
“Not because I’m in on this conspiracy theory idea of yours, Sergeant,” he mocked in his usual authoritative tone. “I’ve got a sick cousin in Texas. His wife called me a few days ago. Guess he’s in a coma now. This shit’s just getting better and better. Now two of my men are dead. Seven are in the hospital. Anything else?”
“Have you heard if we’ll be called in to keep the peace? Like in a martial law situation or anything?”
“No, haven’t heard of that. I doubt our base would be called up anyway. They can call the Youngstown branch or Akron. If it gets that bad, they’ll call the bigger bases. Why? Where are you getting that?”
Tristan explained the conversation with the young hospital worker.
“Yeah, well, I ain’t heard about it yet. National Guard would probably go in before us. Let me call around. I’ve still got a few friends at headquarters who might know something. In the meantime, report to duty. I may have to have you work a little OT this week.”
“Yes, sir,” Tristan said, saluted, and left his commanding officer’s small office. Shit. He didn’t really want overtime. He wanted to be there for Avery Andersson and make sure she was safe. He could always text her and also make her house a tiny stop-off on his usual route.
Tristan showered and dressed in his uniform. He took the Jeep on the route, checked in with the refinery and his buddy there, Jonah. Nothing new to report. They stood there talking about the virus and all the crazy shit they’ve seen in the last few weeks.
“My brother found this video,” Jonah said. “I’ll send you a link. Guess this shit is worse in Russia. Damn Ruskies.”
“Why do you say it like that?”
“They’re the assholes that spread this shit.”
He shook his head, pulled his cap lower to shield his head from the drizzle coming down. “We don’t know that for sure.”
“That’s why I’ll send you the video. This shit’s crazy, man,” Jonah commented. “They’re droppin’ in the tens of thousands over there.”
“In Russia?”
“Yeah, man,” he said. “Watch the video.”
“Got it,” Tristan returned. “Have a good one, man.”
“Yeah, you too,” Jonah said and sent him a wave as he went back into the guard shack.
Tristan drove a few miles away to his next stop, which was just a sub-station with a lot of pipework coming up out of the ground. It was usually where he stopped and ate his lunch. Tonight, he was just stopping to watch the video Jonah sent him.
He cut the engine, pulled out his lunch anyway, and ate his apple while he watched it. The video was grainy and taken at night, so it was hard to see what was going on. The person filming was speaking in Russian, but someone had added subtitles in English. Tristan strained to see what the man was showing the audience. Once it focused in slightly, he could tell better what he was looking at. There was a long wall of chain-link fencing, probably ten feet high with razor wire around the top.
The video jumped as the person did the same when an explosion boomed somewhere beyond a long warehouse inside the perimeter of the fencing about a hundred yards in. The camera zoomed as a fire rose into the night sky.
“They are burning them,” the man in the video said in broken English this time.
Tristan was confused and wished he could peer closer.
The man spoke again, this time in Russian with the subtitles, “The night crawlers. They are burning them.”
He began walking fast to the far end of the fence, still trying to keep the camera focused more on the building, which seemed to be what he wanted people to see. He turned the corner of the fence and kept going. Then he must’ve squatted as the angle went lower to the ground. He zoomed again, and Tristan could see what he meant. They had a large group of the violent kind, or what appeared to be the violent ones or night crawlers, chained together at their hands and feet like a chain gang of prisoners about to be forced into hard labor. Someone shouted an order, and another man with a flame thrower torched them alive. Their screams were horrific. They were people. Or were once people. This went against everything in every peace treaty and crimes against humanity act ever passed by the U.N. or any modern country in the world. This was a war crime he was witnessing.
The man kept walking and talking, but Tristan couldn’t watch the video and read the text at the same time. Peeling his eyes from the camera’s view was too difficult. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He’d been in a lot of shit in his time, but this was hard to watch.
The videographer crouched behind a car and shot more footage. A truck, military grade like a deuce and a half or similar pulled up, and the tailgate dropped. Soldiers used cattle prods to shock people standing in the bed so they’d drop to the ground. Some fell. They were also chained together. This reminded him of the treatment so many millions of Jews suffered during WWII. He watched as they pushed them with electric cattle prods towards an empty field of grass still within the confines of the fencing. The man with the flame thrower lit them on fire, as well. Tristan felt like he might puke. He’d seen a lot of atrocities out there in the world, but this was maybe the worst. Others were being shot firing-squad style against the wall of the old warehouse. Then there was shouting. The man filming took off. Tristan wasn’t sure if they spotted him or not, but the guy wasn’t sticking around to find out.
He made it to an even darker alley where he began monologuing in broken English again, “This virus created by our Motherland is killing millions. They intend much to destroy America with the virus. All Americans would die. This is their idea. They test and try virus in Africa months ago. They kill thousands. The victims, many of them women and children. Now they cannot control it. The virus is make show to them that mother nature is all-powerful, not Mother Russia. We will all be killed. We will all be dead from this. I was worker for research lab trying to find cure. It will not be found. The virus is too smart, engineered by the same people who will also die by it. It is only matter of time. Fate is sealed. This is the end. We all die. Apokalypsis.”
The screen went fuzzy as the camera was set down on the ground of the alley where Tristan could see better. Then what followed was a gunshot. The man’s body dropped onto its side, and a pistol skidded away. Had the man committed suicide? There were so many questions buzzing through his brain. If this man did work for the lab that created the virus, which was the gist that he got from his speech, then the man believed everyone would be wiped out by this. Tristan certainly didn’t speak a whole lot of Russian, but it didn’t take a genius to realize that the scientist had finished his speech with the word, ‘apocalypse.’
Jonah had sent three more videos after that one. Tristan unpacked his whole lunch and started eating. This was going to take a while.
One video was from Africa where a reporter was showing a mass grave for the dead being dug with bulldozers. He’d seen similar during an Ebola outbreak years ago. This one just went on for as long as a few football fields. He hadn’t been watching much news lately between work, spending time with his buddies and Avery Andersson, but Tristan sure as hell didn’t remember seeing any news coverage of mass graves being dug.
Another video was from Denmark. There weren’t subtitles, but the need wasn’t there, either. He could tell what was going on very easily. It was being filmed from a balcony at night in a relatively large city by the scope and street lamps. Mostly, it was just silent audio for a while. Then the recorded sounds sent a chill through him. They were making the same screaming calls as the night Royce was killed in the woods. It was more than one, though. Tristan felt crazy for thinking it, but he was starting to wonder if they were beginning to form packs like wild dogs or wolves. And why nocturnal? Something really messed up their brains with this flu.
Then he had a visual to go along with the audio. The videographer spotted them and panicked in a flurry of words in another language. She filmed the night crawlers sneaking around in the dark streets below. If her phone camera’s time was right, it was two-twenty in the morning. All told, she filmed probably ten or twelve of them running around in the quiet city down her street, hiding behind cars, moving faster than he would’ve thought, and trying to get into cars and houses. They were human but not totally. They didn’t seem to hold the same motor skills anymore, but they sure as hell moved faster than most humans. He remembered that from his own experience the night of the bonfire bloodbath. That man thing was fast, moved with a speed he almost couldn’t match, and Tristan worked out on a regular basis. Her video finally cut with her crying. He recognized the words ‘momma’ and ‘papa.’ He felt bad for her and hoped she had someone to take care of her or help her get to her family. She sounded young, maybe in her twenties.
The last video was one from France, the countryside, a town named Amiens. The person filming was a teenage boy by the sound of his voice, too. He was filming his home by the looks of the cottage’s stone walls. He began whispering. Then he went outside. It was dark out again, and Tristan could hear one of them. He wanted to scream at the kid to get back in the damn house. But the kid kept creeping forward. He’d say things in French, and Tristan caught the word ‘nuit’ which he knew meant night. He went to a barn behind their house with a thatch roof. Something off camera was making a ruckus, a banging and clanging noise as if a whole construction crew was tossing down plywood sheeting onto roof trusses to be nailed down. The closer the kid got to the barn, he realized it was coming from inside there. Then he heard the weird muttering of non-words, the verbalization of the violent ones as the kid rounded the side of the barn and aimed his phone against a closed window. Tristan could see it. His family must’ve been attacked by one or found one on their property and tied it up in the barn to a heavy support post. Then he said, “Oncle Stephan.”
Tristan reeled back. It was the kid’s uncle. Damn, that was a bad break. He felt truly sorry for him. Then the camera became too shaky to focus as the boy ran back to his house and slammed the door. The video cut. It had nearly three million views.
He got out and stretched his legs and back. It was still drizzling and promised to keep up probably until morning. Tristan took out a cigarette and lit up. Not smoking was not an option right now. He was stressed out and disturbed by what he saw. What he’d seen from the videos was all true. The evidence was there. They were amateur videos. Nobody smalltime could’ve taken video and doctored it like that. Their primal screams alone weren’t something that would be easily mimicked. He wanted to text her and make sure she was all right, but Avery Andersson wasn’t his to check in on.
He stamped out the cigarette halfway down, figuring it was better than smoking the whole thing and got back in to fire up the Jeep. Then he drove the rest of his route. He stopped again, this time in town and bought a Coke, some beef jerky, and some chips from a gas station and filled up the Jeep again. They had a pump on their small base but were also allowed to fill up in town when they ran low.
His phone rang on the dash, and he frowned at the time of nearly one a.m. before answering. The screen name popped up as Abraham Andersson.
“Tristan!” Abraham said. “Thank God, I reached you. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Calm down,” he said, his own heart beginning to accelerate at the panic he heard in the kid’s voice. “What’s going on?”
“It’s Avery,” he said, making Tristan’s heart pound hard against his chest wall. “I can’t reach her.”
“What do you mean? You mean you can’t reach her from the hospital?”
He pulled out of the gas station and was already driving toward her family’s house. Funny how he didn’t really know much about the area other than his route, how to get to the nearest small town, how to get to the city of Canton, and how to get to her house.
“No, no. I came home. It’s a long story,” he said.
“Tell me anyway. Slow down. I’m on my way to you. Just take a breath and tell me what’s wrong. You’ve got time. Just explain it slowly.”
“Okay. Sorry,” he said, paused to take a breath. “Avery wanted to go back up to the hospital to relieve our mom. She was planning on staying with Dad. She went up to get him up from his nap and found him sick. He’s really sick, maybe sicker than the kids. I don’t know. She called me at the hospital to come home and help get him to the car ‘cuz the ambulance was gonna take too long, like six hours or something. She couldn’t get him carried out without me.”
He instantly grew angry she hadn’t called him.
“So, when I got there, I helped Ephraim carry him to her car. We loaded him in. I just got a call from Mom like a half hour ago. She’d fallen asleep in the waiting room and didn’t realize they still weren’t there and it was so late. She realized they never showed up, too. She even checked the Emergency Room. Our dad was never checked in.”
“Would Avery have taken him to another hospital?”
“No, that’s the one where the girls and Cyrus are. My mom’s there. She was going there. She told me so.”
“Wait, when did they leave?”
“At eight-forty-five, nine o’clock at the latest,” he said.
Shit. That was three hours ago.
“I’ve been calling and calling. Something’s wrong with her phone. I can’t get a call through. I just know…I know something’s wrong, Tristan. I called the cops. They can’t send anyone. Kaia told me what’s been going on. We can’t find her. I can’t leave the house. The kids…”
“No, do not leave that house. I’ll be there in ten minutes. Stay there. You can tell me which way she would’ve gone, and I’ll go look for her.”
“Ye-yes, sir,” he stuttered, sounding like he wanted to cry.
“Hang tight, man. Hold it together.”
Tristan sped. He didn’t care if he was defying orders to stay on duty. Screw it. If she was hurt somewhere or broke down and out of cell range, he’d be right back to work in an hour. Nobody would even know. If it was something worse, he didn’t care if his L.T. hammered him.
He hit the back road going sixty-five, heedless of speed because the cops were too busy to help Abraham find his sister anyway or send an ambulance to take their sick dad to the damn hospital.
Stomping the brakes, he zipped down their drive and slammed it into neutral before setting the parking brake. Abraham ran out of the house to greet him.
“Where’s the rest of the kids?”
“In bed. Nobody else knows yet.”
“Good,” he said and laid a hand on the kid’s shoulder. “Don’t tell anyone yet. Now, give me exact and detailed directions on which route she would’ve taken.”
“It’s pretty simple.”
After he was done, Tristan realized it was the same way he went to the city the other day. Good thing for him, it was the only way he knew.
“Stay inside. Keep the house locked. I saw you guys have a bow?”
“Yeah,” he answered.
“If anyone comes down that driveway that isn’t me, you may need to defend the house. Do you think you can do that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. I’ll be back with Avery.”
Abraham nodded nervously but looked out of his mind with worry. Tristan got back in the Jeep and made sure the gate closed behind him when he pulled out. Then he sped away again. He knew she wasn’t on this road because he would’ve seen her car.
He followed it to the main road, a smoother state route, and sped up. He was looking for her broken down Lexus SUV, a smaller, more compact vehicle than the beast her mother drove, so he didn’t fly in case he would miss it.
He turned off the radio and kept going. The hills and curves in this county were intense and dangerous in spots. His mind fled back to last night with Spencer and finding him in a ditch. He didn’t want to discover Avery in a ditch.
Keeping to the route her brother told him, Tristan came to the first small town, drove through it and kept going. He ended up all the way up by the freeway that would take him to the hospital. There was no way she got this far. Plus, she could’ve gotten cell service or her roadside assistance emergency link in her Lexus to work in this area so close to the city if she was just broken down. He took the exit and looped back around to get on the freeway going west again. He had to have missed her. This time he sped up as he then took the exit for route 43. It was a two-lane road, but he sped anyway. He didn’t pass a single car. This was out in the country away from the city but not even as remote as where she lived. Somewhere along this path, she had to have broken down.
Ten minutes later, he passed through the small town again and angled onto route 171 again. This road had a lot of severe curves and hills, so he slowed back down. The rain picked up again until he was using his wipers on medium speed.
“Dammit,” he swore to the cab of the Jeep. The rain was making it harder to see. Out in this area, the houses were sparse and spread out few and far between like on her road. It was also a lot darker than in the city without streetlamps guiding the way.
He came to one of the steeper hills and descended, braking because it looked like water was collecting on the road at the bottom. He didn’t want to hydroplane and lose control. That wasn’t going to help her, so he slowed down even more.
That’s when he spotted something shiny out his window in the field at the bottom of the hill on the other side of the road. Tristan drove up to the top of the hill and turned around. He went back down and pulled off the side of the road and took the flashlight out of his toolbox. Then he got out and walked around the Jeep, through a mud puddle where the water was pretty deep, and toward the object he’d seen flashing. It was silver. Then the beam of his flashlight caught it. Tristan ran. It was her car, the light having caught her bumper. The SUV was upside down on its roof. The lights weren’t on, which was why he hadn’t spotted it the first time through here. It made him sick that he hadn’t seen it. He’d wasted at least another forty minutes driving to the city and backtracking looking for her.
As he neared, the light bobbing up and down as he ran, Tristan could see her still in her seat with the seatbelt on. She wasn’t moving as he dropped to his knees beside the driver’s door. It was crushed, and he couldn’t open it.
“Dammit!” he shouted and ran to the other side. It was also too hard to open. He wondered how many times she’d rolled. At least three or four to have ended up this far from the road and with this amount of damage. He aimed the light into the back. If she had her father with her, he was gone, and the rear passenger door was open. Tristan was going to have to go in that way.
He crawled through debris all over the ceiling that must’ve flown everywhere during the accident. Finally, he could reach her. Placing two fingers on her slim neck, he breathed a sigh of relief when he got a pulse. She was definitely not awake, though, and he sure as hell didn’t know what all was wrong with her.
Dragging his knife out of his boot, Tristan cut her seat belt and managed to get her untangled from it. Then he set the flashlight on the ceiling of the backseat where he was kneeling. The roof was on the ground so he could see with the flashlight lying there without having to hold onto it. He was going to need both hands to get her out of the car.
Luckily for him, she wasn’t a very big person, but he still struggled. Hooking his hands under her armpits, he gingerly pulled her back toward him on the ceiling, hoping the broken glass from the skylight didn’t cut her. Struggling to drag her gently in the tight confines, Tristan was also mindful of further hurting her. Once he got her to the back with him, it was easier to move her. After a few more minutes, Tristan had her free and out of the vehicle. He reached in and grabbed his flashlight, sticking it in his back pocket.
“Avery, wake up,” he said, touching her cheek and cradling her head in his lap. Nothing. No response whatsoever. He had to get her to the hospital. He knew she had her father with her in the car, but as he shined the light of his phone around the pasture, he didn’t see the man. With the back door being open like that, he wondered if the man left to find help. Or, perhaps he was flung from the vehicle during the accident if he wasn’t in a seatbelt.
“Mr. Andersson!” he yelled at the top of his lungs but didn’t get an answer. Tristan knew he had to get her to a doctor. She was cold to the touch from being in her car without the heat going for potentially three or four hours. The temperature in the Jeep earlier read forty-six degrees on his way out on his route. It was probably colder now. Without a choice, Tristan pocketed his phone, hefted her into his arms carefully, and walked quickly back across the field toward the Jeep. His body froze, and the hair on the back of his neck stood at attention when he heard one of those things do that awful scream they all seemed to do. It was behind him somewhere in the distance. He’d left his sidearm in the Jeep console.
He picked up the pace and practically jogged the last twenty yards. Then he managed to open the passenger door and shoved everything onto the floor from the seat to get her in. He reclined her seat back as far as it would go. A chill ran up his spine as he heard her car being rummaged. The door or some part of it was slammed over and over again as if someone were angry.
He shut her door and ran around to the other side and got in. Something hit her passenger door with a force like a rhinoceros had suddenly appeared out of the field and decided to pursue them. He engaged the door locks. Tristan cranked over the engine and put it in drive. He glanced quickly to make sure nothing was opening her door as he stomped on the gas. He stalled out.
“Fuck!” he shouted as the Jeep was hit again by the person outside in the rain trying to get in. He stomped down on the clutch and fired it up again. “Son of a bitch.”
Another glance out her window encouraged him not to stall the Jeep. Mad, bloodshot eyes stared through the rain at him. Tristan didn’t even hesitate this time. He ground it into gear and took off, not even checking to make sure anyone was coming. He flew, heedless of the rain this time. Nothing mattered. Not the weather or the speed limit. All he could think was that he had to get her to a hospital. He couldn’t even process the fact that he had been staring at what he was sure used to be her father through that window.