After – Chapter 19

Ciera knocked on my bedroom door the next morning. “Morning. It’s almost 8. I got bacon and eggs going, plus coffee. Figured we’d try to get an early start to the day.” I nodded and headed for the bathroom. I was more appreciative of the fact that we had electricity because that meant we actually had hot water.

She’d gone all out for breakfast. She’d fried up most of a pound of bacon and scrambled what seemed like a dozen eggs. I dropped a little bit to Minion.

Ciera laughed. “He’s a pretty cool dog. I’ve been up since about six. He came out not long after I got up and scratched at the door. Couldn’t find his leash, but I took him out anyway. Didn’t run. Sniffed a couple of trees, marked a couple of them, came right back to me.”

“He’s gotten really good about that since this whole thing happened. He wasn’t really a runner to begin with, but he would certainly explore freely if you know what I mean.” We got the breakfast dishes cleared away, then settled in on the couch. “So did you come up with any great plans for the day since you’ve been up?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t say great, but I’ve got some ideas. I called all of the guys on the warrant squad. I…” She shrugged, then wiped her eyes. “Plus I called the office to see where things stood. I got through to one dispatcher, and she said there’s one guy in the jail and one other patrol deputy and that’s it.” She sniffled. “Ninety people worked there. Plus another dozen or so civilians. And now there’s only four of us left. What the hell?”

Those numbers seemed to hold true with what I saw on the way up. Less than ten percent of the people in any given place had survived. It was probably less than five percent. What did that mean for us as a society?

Ciera cleared her throat. “So anyway, I asked Rosenkranz if she had been taking any reports. Like had anybody reported or called in about something other than, you know, thousands of people dropping dead? She said she hadn’t.”

“So what’s our next step?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Good old-fashioned detective work. We start by knocking on doors. Knock on doors and if anyone’s alive, ask them if they’ve seen Hannah or Monica, or if they noticed anything.”

I nodded. “Let’s get to it then.”

By noon, we’d covered about three blocks of Hannah’s street. The morning had been excruciating. We must have knocked on a hundred doors, and we’d only found three people alive. All of the bodies we found were heavily decomposed. The people who had animals in the house were truly heartbreaking. A cat slipped out of one apartment and followed us all through the building, meowing the whole time. We spent fifteen minutes deciding if we were going to turn all of the animals loose. It seemed cruel, but it seemed just as cruel to leave them locked up in a house or apartment with their dead owner. At least outside, they’d have a shot at food and water.

We went back to the apartment for lunch and a strategy session. The clock on the microwave read 00:00. Not a good sign, but at least the power had come back on. I made some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while Ciera got on her laptop and printed out some maps of the Doylestown area. “Figured I’d better do this while we’ve still got power.”

“Makes sense,” I said. “You have any idea how you guys generate electricity around here?”

She snorted. “Yeah. I flip the switch, and the lights come on. Well, usually. PECO can be a little flaky.” She gestured at the microwave. “This ain’t that unusual. And who cares in the long run, you know? It’s not like we’ll be able to do anything when the power goes out for keeps. You’se know how to run a power plant?”

She had a point. “You still want to knock on doors this afternoon?”

“Doesn’t feel like it did us any good, does it?” She leaned forward, arms on her knees and head resting on her arms.

I couldn’t tell. “All we’ve really established is that there’s not many people left alive on these three blocks. I kind of want to get out a look at more of the town. Maybe we’ll see some folks out and about, and maybe they’ve seen something.” I stood and stretched. “Come on. We’ll take my truck.”

She didn’t move for a minute. Teardrops hit the floor at her feet. I knelt next to her, putting an arm around her. “We’ll find her,” I whispered.

She collapsed against me, this tough deputy sheriff, sobbing. “Oh, God. It hurts. It hurts so fucking much. I can’t lose her. I just can’t.”

I pulled her closer, just like I used to hold Hannah when she cried, and tried to hug the pain away, knowing I couldn’t.

I don’t know how we stayed there like that.

Eventually, we made our way out to my truck, leaving Minion at the apartment. It didn’t take us long to drive around the borough, even with all the crashes. After an hour of that, we’d only encountered two other people, women walking near the SEPTA train station. Heading south along the tracks, they both wore big camping backpacks complete with sleeping bags hanging from the bottom. A German Shepherd accompanied them wearing his own doggy pack. They hadn’t seen or heard anything “out of the ordinary” in the last few days. I think we all cringed at the phrase.

Two blocks east, Ciera gestured toward a Wawa. “Pull in there. Wanna see something.”

I checked the store out of habit while she went behind the building. It looked open but was empty, nobody and no bodies. Same for the lot. The entire place was eerily clean. I pulled a diet Dr. Pepper from the cooler as Ciera came back in. “Find anything interesting?”

She nodded, a grim look on her face as she grabbed a Monster from the cooler next to me. “New graffiti on the building. One of the Crips gangs from Philly tagged it.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You know Philly gangs?”

“Kind of have to in my line of work. We at least know who the major players are. Some of them come up here to hide out if things get too hot down there. These guys are way out of their territory though. Their crew runs in South Philly. Why are they up here?” She took a long drink of her Monster. “And why is this place so clean? It’s never this clean.”

I went back to the truck to look at the maps. It looked like we’d driven well over half of the streets in the borough, and had nothing to show for it. Then a thought hit me, making me bang my head on the truck in frustration.

“What?”

“I haven’t tried her phone since I got to town.” I pulled up her contact and thumbed the Call button, heart pounding. There was no real reason to expect her to answer, and she didn’t. But the call didn’t go straight to voicemail, either. I left a message telling her that Ciera and I were at her place and were looking for her, and that Ciera’s phone didn’t work.

Ciera’s eyes opened wide as I hung up. “You left a voicemail.”

“Well, yeah. I figured it couldn’t hurt.”

She waved her hands at my confusion, an excited look on her face. “No, I mean you had to wait for it to go to voicemail.”

I shook my head. “Still not tracking.”

“That means her phone is still working. We can track it!”

I was doubtful. “That’s a nice idea, but what’s the likelihood that we could find a live person at her carrier who would help us?”

“Head back to the apartment. I’ll explain on the way.”

Ciera had signed them both up for a tracking app. They could see each other’s location and even hit a button to send an emergency text message to a number of her contacts. “And they’ve got a website we can use since my phone is busted.”

We spent the next hour screwing around with the website along with installing the app on my phone. The location service was having major problems. The location circle was about five miles wide and kept moving in large jumps that were physically impossible unless she was teleporting. After a while, we were able to narrow it down to a general circle around Edge Hill, north of Philly. “What the hell is she doing there?”

Ciera leaned back against the kitchen counter. “I’ve got no clue. It doesn’t make sense for her to leave the apartment when she knew you were coming. It doesn’t make sense at all.”

The only good news we had at this point was that we thought she had Ciera’s backup gun that she’d given her a few months ago. “She’s a pretty good shot with it, at least at the range. She can punch holes in paper all day long but we’ve never done any realistic training. You were in the Army. You know how it is.”

I did know how it was. Sometimes the soldiers with the greatest swagger were the first ones to duck and hide in combat. No matter how well you trained, the first time you faced the elephant, all bets were off. If you survived that first encounter, you generally wouldn’t have major problems in future gunfights.

We racked our brains trying to figure out why Hannah would be sixty miles away. And we couldn’t come up with a good reason. “Her office is a couple or four miles southeast of where her phone is. But I can’t imagine why she would have gone there.” Ciera said.

“I’d wonder if they were going after someone from Monica’s family, but the last time I talked to her, she said that Monica told her nobody had survived.” I flipped the chicken breasts that I was frying and turned the heat up on some water. Dinner was going to be chicken and pasta and some broccoli that we’d found in the freezer.

A moment later, Minion went into his low growl, just like he had when Ciera had first arrived at the apartment. He was sitting near the door, staring at it. Ciera and I looked at each other and headed for the door at the same time. I called Minion away from the door quietly as Ciera took up a position with her pistol drawn, then yanked the door open.

Minion went off, barking loudly at a woman and a teenaged girl with short dyed orange hair standing at the top of the steps. They jumped back when Minion started barking.

“Monica? Who’s this? Where’s Hannah?” Ciera holstered her pistol and looked down the stairs then back at Monica.

Monica looked confused by the scene in front of her. There was her neighbor’s girlfriend, a strange man, and a large, loud dog all in her neighbor’s apartment. “What do you mean? Isn’t she back yet?”

“Back from where? I asked. “Minion! Chill.” He had quit barking after a moment, but he was still tense and pulling towards the girls despite my best efforts at holding his collar.

Monica looked at me then at Minion. “Wait a minute. Who are you guys?” The girl with her was standing behind her, but didn’t look scared.

“That’s Hannah’s dad and his dog,” Ciera said. “What do you mean ‘back yet?’ Back from where?” Ciera sounded as confused as I was.

Monica took fifteen maddening minutes to tell us about how she and Hannah had driven down to Middletown, about ninety miles away in Delaware, to pick up her niece, Paige. I could barely keep track of the story with all of the rabbit trails she kept following. The upshot of the story was that they had disagreed about transportation at some point and split up.

I literally had to pull Ciera back before she took a swing at Monica. “Why the hell would you split up?”

Paige spoke for the first time. “My parents’ car broke down, and it wouldn’t start. All we had was the motorcycle. Hannah wanted us to steal a car, one that we’d all fit in, but Monica wanted to keep the bike. So we took off on it. Monica said she’d catch up.” She sounded completely indifferent to the risks.

I shook my head in frustration. “But why split up? What did that accomplish?”

The teen crossed her arms and cocked a hip in a classic defiant pose, still standing behind Monica. “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask her?”

I looked at Ciera, who was still staring daggers at Monica, and understood completely what she was feeling. I wasn’t sure what Monica was thinking, but I wanted to give this kid a swift kick in the ass because it didn’t sound like she understood what was going on. “Paige? Do you understand what’s happened this week?”

She pushed past Monica and squared off against me. “You bet your ass I do! I spent most of the last week trying to keep my sister alive while the power kept failing. Ever tried to suction a breathing tube out without electricity? Ever had to decide if it would be more humane to just let someone die? You ever tried to have a conversation with someone who couldn’t do more than blink? Fun times. Just chill out, old man. You’re not the only one who lost somebody. Yeah, I freaking know exactly what the hell happened this week.” She spun on her heels, stomped into Monica’s apartment, and slammed the door.

I stared at the door for a minute, then walked back into Hannah’s apartment, my eyes stinging. I told myself it was because the chicken was burning.

Ciera joined me a few minutes later. “Damn, but I need a cigarette. I guess the sister got paralyzed a few years ago in a skiing accident. From the neck down. She and Paige were the only survivors, and when the sister died, Paige called Monica.”

I set the chicken on a plate, then started frying the broccoli in the leftover grease. It became suddenly almost critically important that I know the sister’s name. I cared less about the parents and any other siblings Paige might have had, or the rest of Monica’s family. I just wanted to know everything about the sister and what she and Paige had gone through. How do you even have that kind of conversation with someone who’s so thoroughly disabled? How do you find the words to bring up the topic? “Hey, if you want me to let you die, blink twice. If not, blink three times.” I shook my head. “How are they fixed for food? She have anything else to say about Hannah?”

“Didn’t ask about food. Sounds like they had a hell of a trip. Got stuck in a traffic jam on 95 down by the airport, then took a motorcycle and rode that on down to Middletown. Spent the night at the house, then took the family car and the bike. Monica said something about it being easier to get around on the bike.”

“When did they leave?”

She swallowed a bite before answering. “Okay, I usually hate veggies, but this is really good. Anyway, Monica said they left here Friday. Thought they’d be back that day.”

I counted the days in my head. I last talked to Hannah on Thursday. Ciera and I had both made it here Saturday. Today was Monday. “So they spent Friday night in Middletown, which is where? And why are they just back today?”

“About ninety miles south. They got stuck in another traffic jam Saturday and had to spend the night in the car. Then in the morning it wouldn’t start. They got into an argument about taking another car. I guess Monica and Paige were both icked out by taking a car someone had died in or something. So they jumped on the bike and headed on up. Said they told Hannah they’d find another car and come back for her. Then when they did, and they got back to where they’d left her, she was gone.”

That didn’t make sense to me at all. I wasn’t upset about the trip anymore. But splitting up like that was kind of stupid. Then for Hannah to take off when she knew they were coming back? For her to leave at that point? It wasn’t like her to do something like that. “She remember where that was?”

“Not really, she said. All I got was ‘somewhere in south Philly.’ That doesn’t really narrow it down much.”

I tossed Minion a bite of chicken. “You think we can narrow it down with the tracking app?”

She leaned back in her seat. “Don’t know. That ain’t been as useful as I was hoping. And her last location was way north of that. You thinking of heading down there?”

“You’re not?”

“Touché.”

I shrugged. “It makes the most sense, doesn’t it? We know she’s down that way, or at least was. And her being out of contact isn’t necessarily as bad as it could be, right? If you look at the way the locater was bouncing around, I’d say it’s a fair bet that the cell grid is acting up already.”

“What if she comes back while we’re gone?”

I smiled. “Then Monica calls us to try and keep my daughter from beating her ass.”

Cue a pretty gross spit-take from Ciera. “Asshole.” But she was smiling.

We spent the rest of the evening planning our trip. It was only about thirty miles, so maybe a half-hour trip back in the old days of a week ago. Now, we were planning on being gone for a couple of days. We rearranged gear in the truck, packed a few things, then Ciera said she had to run an errand. I did laundry while she was gone.

She was back an hour later with a big armload of stuff that she dropped on the couch before tossing a small gold object at me. “Bucks County Sheriff’s star. Figure that way we’ll both look like cops. Got some tac gear for you here, and there’s a bunch more stuff in the car.” It took us two more trips to get everything in. She’d grabbed the tac vest for me and a couple of war bags to go through, along with a bunch of gear I didn’t even recognize. By the time everything was sorted, it was close to midnight, but the two of us were geared up and well-armed.

I hoped we wouldn’t need any of it.

Chapter 20

Copyright © 2019 Bob Mueller

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