Desolate The Complete Trilogy

14



Howard, Carl, and Reg approached the guard house. The door was locked so Carl picked up a shotgun from one of the dead guards in the yard and used the butt to smash the doorknob to pieces. The door appeared to be barricaded with furniture from the other side and it took all three of them to finally push it open.

The building was empty except for four guards who locked themselves in before they got sick and died. Besides the mess of the bodies, it was heaven. The three inmates ran from room to room laughing and giggling like kids at Christmas. They marveled at all the luxuries they had been without for far too long. Central heat with a thermostat set at a toasty seventy degrees. A huge fireplace and stacks of firewood. Real beds with mattresses, pillows, and blankets. A shower with hot water. A kitchen and pantry packed with food. Beer, whisky, music, videos, cigarettes, porn, real clothes - it was almost too much to bear.

For the next several hours they basked in all of it. They took hot showers and dressed in clean guard uniforms. They stuffed themselves silly with as much food as they could hold and then ate some more. They weren’t even bothered by the corpses scattered about the building. After the excitement died down they simply dragged them out the door and into the frigid night they vowed never to return to.

“I tell ya fellas, this is the life,” Carl said. He had his feet up on the table, hands on his belly, and a cigarette hanging from his mouth. A cowboy hat he borrowed from a dead guard sat low on his head, almost covering his eyes. “If I’m gonna get sick at least I’ll be able to do it in style and with a smile on my face.”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Howard said. He found a pipe and some tobacco and lazily puffed away. “I think it’s obvious the three of us have somehow been spared by the disease. None of us have shown any symptoms at all.”

“Yeah well, ain’t we the lucky ones then,” Reg said.

“Yes sir,” Carl said dreamily. “We are sittin’ as pretty as posies.”

“For a week or two anyhow. Then I reckon they’ll put a bullet in our heads and nuke the bloody place off the map.”

Carl’s dopey grin turned into a confused frown. “Whadda ya mean Reg?”

“The next supply ship is bound to show soon, right? You think when it docks they’ll just send us back to the barracks and chew us out for not behavin’?”

“He’s right, Carl. This whole place is crawling with that disease or virus or whatever it is. They’ll probably take samples from the dead and destroy the camp.”

“What about us?”

“That’s what I don’t want to wait around and find out,” Reg said.

“What are you suggesting?” Howard asked. “That we escape?”

“It’s the only way. We’ve got plenty of shooters and we could take them by surprise. We could jack the ship and be in Argentina or Chile in a few hours.”

“I don’t like it,” said Howard. “I can’t see the three of us taking over a whole damn ship.”

“What if we stay and show them the spaceship?” Carl said. “Hell, we’d be famous. Not only could we take credit for finding the ship but we’re the only goddamn survivors in this dump.”

Howard laughed. “Look, I’m no conspiracy theorist but I have a feeling a space ship filled with intergalactic specimens and a virus that kills everyone it infects is something the government is going to keep under its hat. I think Reg is right. They’ll test the shit out of us to see why we’re immune and then keep us quiet for good.”

“Look mates,” said Reg. “All I know is I’m wearing clean underdrawers and I’m on me way to getting pleasantly spitty. F*ck it then. I says tonight we live the good life and no worries about the rest of that shit until tomorrow. Savvy?”

“I’ll drink to that.” Carl raised his beer for a toast. “You sure you don’t want a cold one, Howie?”

“No thanks,” Howard raised his can of Pepsi. “That’s what got me into this mess in the first place.”

“More for me and Reg then. Cheers.”

The lights went out.

“What the hell?”

“Generator must have shut down,” said Howard. “Did anybody see any flashlights before?”

“There’s got to be one somewhere.”

Howard fumbled for the cigarette lighter on the table and used it to offer some meager light. “There’s probably a supply room or something in the back. I’ll take a look.”

He slowly walked with the hand cupped flame through the dark guardhouse. At the back of the building he found what he was looking for, a door marked STORAGE.

Howard pushed open the heavy door and a foul odor hit his nose. His thumb slipped off the lighter and it fell to the floor. God, what was that stench? He crouched down in the darkness and felt on the floor for the lighter. The floor was wet and sticky.

“Howard!” Reg shouted from the other side of the building. “We found a torch in the kitchen.”

“I’m over here,” he shouted. “Hurry up, I can’t see a damn thing!”

Reg and Carl walked down the hall accompanied by a bright dancing beam of light. Howard had his back turned to the open door of the storage room.

“Good. I guess we’ll have to go outside and check out the generator. It’s just probably out of gas or something.”

Carl and Reg didn’t reply. They were too busy looking into the storage room behind Howard.

“What?” Howard turned around and discovered what the sticky wetness on the floor was. It was blood from the poor guard lying on the floor. His entire torso was cut neatly down the center and his ribcage was severed in the middle and pulled apart. All of his organs were gone. Heart, lungs, everything. The only thing that remained was the severed end of his large intestines, leaking feces, blood, and bile into the empty body cavity.

His face was frozen in a look of pain and bewilderment, his eyes gazing at the ceiling. In his right hand he clutched a blood covered M4 carbine and empty shell casings littered the entire floor of the room. Next to his body were two empty thirty round magazines.

“Oh my god,” Howard finally said. Reg pointed the flashlight around the room.

“Christ, bloody bullet holes everywhere. Even in the ceiling. Who was this bloke shooting at?”

“Whoever it was, I don’t think he got ‘em,” said Carl. “Poor bastard. That’s a rough way to go, even for a guard.”

Howard pointed at the back of the door. “Look, most of the bullet holes are in the door and around the frame. He must have been making his last stand in here before he was killed.” He ducked back in the hallway, away from the stench. “Come on, we have to get the generator going. We’ll figure all this out after the lights come on.”

They found another flashlight and some emergency candles in the storage room. With the candles going and a good fire burning in the fireplace, the main room of the guardhouse was almost cozy.

Howard still yearned for the bright lights provided by the generator though. He gathered his courage and put on one of the heavy guard parkas and some boots.

Carl held out a handgun he had found. “Better take this, just in case.”

Howard looked distastefully at the weapon and shook his head. “That’s okay, I don’t really do guns any more. I’ll only be a minute.”

“You want me to come with?”

“That’s okay,” Howard slapped Carl on the shoulder. “If I’m not back in ten minutes call the cops.”

Howard opened the door and stepped out into the night. Despite wearing real clothes and shoes instead of the dirty rags he’d worn for weeks, the night was still incredibly cold. The wind slapped at his face while he slowly made his way through the snowdrifts to the back of the building.

When he turned the corner he could make out the large shape of the generator a few feet away from the guardhouse and heard the motor running. When the lights went out he figured it just ran out of fuel. With everybody sick there would have been nobody keeping an eye on it the last few days. He used the weak beam of the flashlight to look for any clues but everything looked normal, as far as he could tell. The hell with this, it was too damn cold. He’d run back inside and take another look at it in the morning. They’d just have to make do with the fireplace for the night.

Howard turned to head back the way he came when something caught his eye. Several depressions in the snow that might have been footprints before the wind got to them were near the generator. He followed the cable sticking out of the generator with the flashlight beam and solved the mystery of the blackout. The power cable that was supposed to deliver power to the building was severed. It wasn’t a clean cut like you’d see from a wire cutter or a saw. It was shredded and ripped apart.

He spun around at a noise he thought he heard behind him and saw nothing. The flashlight only revealed snow and darkness beyond the reach of the beam. He switched it off and crouched down, waiting for his eyes to adjust. If someone was out there, they would stand out against the light snow. He saw the silhouette of the mountains at the edge of the valley against the dark sky but nothing else. What was that noise? He could have sworn it was right behind him. All he heard now was the wind, generator motor, and his heart thumping in his ears. Howard clicked on the flashlight and hauled ass back to the front door.

Carl was adding logs to the fire and Reg sat at the table taking a pull from a bottle of scotch.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know.” Howard stomped his feet, shaking off the snow. “The generator is still running but there’s something wrong with the cable. It’s all torn up and I don’t think we can fix it.”

“How could that happen?” Carl asked. “You sure we can’t fix it?”

“Yeah, pretty sure.” Howard took off his coat and draped it on the back of the chair. He felt a lot better now that he was back inside.

Reg felt uneasy. He probed the room with his flashlight and noticed something in the far corner. Puddles on the floor. He pointed the light to where Howard had just been standing. The snow from his boots had melted and made the same kind of puddles.

“Bloody hell. I think there was somebody else in this room after the lights went out.”