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  LAST WOMAN 2

  Jacqueline Druga

  LAST WOMAN 2

  By Jacqueline Druga

  Copyright 2014 by Jacqueline Druga

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A very special thanks to Jenny S. and Linda K for all your help in getting this book ready.

  Dedication

  To Franny L. For putting up with all my midnight rambling messages through the tough scenes.

  ONE - FAYE WILLS

  All that I was and all that I ever wanted to live for was gone. It slipped from my grasp long before mankind, as I knew it, vanished from the face of the earth. I was not one of the lucky ones, I didn't die. To some that wasn't a bad thing, to me, at the time, death would have been a dream come true. I wanted to die. I wanted to be rid of this godforsaken world months prior to the disease that crushed life into the ground.

  I missed it, you know.

  I missed the end of the world. Months prior to the sickness named ERDS, everything about my life ended. I experienced what every other person on the earth would face in a matter of months.

  Death.

  My son Mark, just on the brink of his driver's test, was driving with my husband and young daughter. A normal afternoon outing and their innocent lives were taken by a drunk driver battling his own personal heartbreak.

  That driver took from me my entire family. In a snap, in a heartbeat, they were gone. From that day in February forward I didn't care. I lost my job, fell into a deep state of depression and drank my pain into a numb state. It never went away, just numbed for an evening only to return with a vengeance when I next opened my eyes.

  I attempted to take my life. Why else would I want to live? I held a gun to my head but didn't have the courage to pull the trigger. I stood on the bridge but couldn't climb over the railing. I took a handful of pills, washed it down with a third of a fifth of bourbon, only to have a neighbor discover me in a nick of time.

  While I battled my demons, the world battled a virus that moved in a stealth like manner across the globe. I heard of it and didn't think much of it.

  I couldn't be so lucky as to fall sick with the flu and die.

  My one way path to death was set and subconsciously or not I was drinking my way there. I did so all the way to the night in April when, while out with friends, I hit my limit. Too much alcohol in my blood and I not only passed out, I went into an alcohol induced coma and was hospitalized.

  How ironic that the one thing I used to try and kill myself with probably aided in saving my life. The oxygen fed into my system probably filtered the virus, my breathing was slow and so was my heart rate, decreasing the rate of infection and how it infiltrated my blood.

  All of this is theory, but my comatose state had a role to play. Despite the fact that I caught the killer virus, I didn't die.

  They thought I did.

  In fact, they tossed my body in a makeshift mass grave at a football stadium.

  When I came to, I was in a cloth body bag, snuggled in between corpses, naked and fly ridden. Blood from my ripped out IV shunt covered my arm; my legs were nearly glued together from my own bodily functions.

  I had been out in that coma for three weeks, then mistaken for dead and left behind for over three days to rot on top of a pile of corpses.

  I lived.

  Why?

  When I stumbled from that stadium I stumbled into a desolate world emptied of life.

  No one remained. I was alone. I thought it was a dream, that it wasn't real. But it was. I was a statistic to whoever tossed me in that pile. Number 4723. Not Faye Wills, but a number.

  I believed after I got my senses and strength back that I just wanted to make my way home to die. Make my way across the city to my house. End it curled up in my five year old daughter's bed.

  While I cried at first over the shock of what happened to the world, a part of me rejoiced. I didn't sob over the death, I sobbed over the silence. To me, the world ended before the ERDS virus claimed its victims, and I was biding my time until I caught up.

  All plans sound good at first and fool proof. But even I, with all intentions of ending my suffering on the earth, wasn't ready face the prospect of surviving.

  After my family had been killed, and while life still thrived around me, I wanted to relinquish it all and join the ones I loved. Leave the putrid crowded pain filled place. Yet, in a blast of irony, in a silent world void of life, suddenly, surprisingly even to me... I found my will to live.

  TWO - DODGE CASH

  Thanks to the convenience of cable news channels, I watched the world's demise unfold before my eyes and didn't even realize it. But in the final days, there was no mistaking it.

  My life moved onward despite news of the virus and so did my daily events. I didn't worry much about some sickness; then again, they didn't say much about it. Just that it was highly contagious and if possible, stay inside.

  The fact that it killed everyone that became infected was skipped over. Probably on purpose. If I had the responsibility of informing the public about it, I would leave out that tidbit too.

  People didn't stop at first, not in America. I mean, hey that nasty little bug was overseas. We listened to the news but didn't register what it all meant.

  One of my employees in my auto shop told me about this conspiracy site and how they had pictures of mass graves in England.

  I laughed and told him that it was all propaganda and a way to get advertising money.

  No flu or bug killed that many. Hell not even the Spanish Flu did what the conspiracy site claimed.

  But the Bubonic plague did. I forgot about that one and how much damage it did to the world.

  Daily news reports would come on. Nothing earth shattering or anything that consumed the airwaves.

  Slowly it built.

  It seemed as if I couldn't change a brake pad without hearing about an infected country.

  Then it was infected cities.

  I took a little bit more notice when the bug showed up on the West Coast. Nothing really changed much about my life while the bug began its course. I'd pick up my kids at the ex's house, take them to school, get to my shop and face a lot full of cars dropped off the night before. I'd assign the cars, do the repairs, clear out the lot sans the few problematic ones and then head home.

  My life was routine. Evening take out or something on the grill no matter what the weather, a cold beer or two. Three nights a week I had my younger kids and every Monday night a video call to my son at college while we watched wrestling together.

  There was no special female in my life because I gave up on that. My kids, all three were my life.

  Then the virus that was just a news report became a reality.

  Fast, too. The momentum of the flu was unbelievable. Beginning of April it was overseas. On Easter Sunday, April 19, the warning was put out that it was moving rapidly.

  Schools were closed that week and I couldn't register how quickly it consumed my life.

  Within a day my popular and busy repair shop was suddenly empty. My mechanics called in sick. Then my ex-wife called to tell me she was sick and that my younger two were getting 'the fever'.

  I felt like I was in the novel, I am Legend.

  Some European Flu sweeping its way across the globe, no prejudice against race or age. Streets were empty, only those rushing to go nowhere and military tucks rolled down the roads.

  I remember calling Tyler, my oldest, he wasn't sick, it was still early in the virus and he was in another city. I felt helpless and out of control. I was always able to
right the wrong, to fixed things, but this was something I couldn't fix.

  I couldn't make my kids better. By the time they had caught it the cold reality of its lethality was known.

  Everywhere on the streets were body bags or bodies wrapped in curtains, blankets, you name it. People tossed out the dead like the trash. Trucks came by and picked them up. We were instructed if we lost anyone not to keep them in the home, but to place them outside with some form of identification.

  My ex, desperately ill and my kids not much better, begged me to go to an aid station to get medicine for them. Some sort of relief.

  I knew it was a gamble. Especially knowing there wasn't any medicine that could save them. Leaving them meant taking a chance of being gone too long.

  Having to go into the city was a risk, but my ex begged me. So against my better judgment, I went. I drove across the bridge, only to have to park quite a distance from the aid distribution tent. God, I waited in line for hours. My phone died, and the last time I talked to Melissa, my ex-wife, she was gasping. I had to get home. If she passed away who would be there for my kids?

  The soldiers passing out medication pouches announced they were done for the day. And like in some sort of bad science fiction post apocalypse film, people began rioting, yelling, pushing and fighting.

  Weren't they sick? To me they should have been more concerned about those they came there to help. I turned to leave and was shoved back. An innocent bystander, drawn into the mobbing crowd. I just wanted to push my way out. But I supposed because I'm a bug guy, I was a target and was one of the first arrested and detained.

  Before I could even comprehend what was happening, I was tossed in county jail.

  I thought they'd let me out. But they didn't.

  No one came. No due process of the law. The television covered the virus, twenty-four seven and all I could do was watch and worry about my kids.

  I tried. I fought, pleaded and begged, but no one cared. I was a common criminal and the guards on duty were only concerned with events outside the jail walls.

  Couldn't blame them.

  There were forty cells in our pod division or section of the jail, and none of the cells were locked. So we moved freely about the unit. I watched as not only the news team grew sick, but those around me in the cells.

  By my fourth day there, I knew getting out was impossible. The course of the flu was fast. My poor children were already gone and taken. I wasn't there to hold them or to comfort them. I wasn't there to tell them how much I loved them.

  I wasn't there.

  Instead, I was a helpless prisoner in a death ward. Every hour, minute, every second of my days were filled with visions of my poor babies. Suffering, needing ... reaching for nothing.

  I killed me. It broke my heart so badly I felt the physical pain.

  It didn't take long for silence to take over. When the news stopped, I listened to the city shut down around me. Bridges collapsing, explosions. Then nothing. No cars. No shouting. Nothing. Not even a damn bird squawked.

  The television stayed on for another day, showing nothing but an empty chair. The news crew ... dead, I suppose.

  That was the same time everyone around me was either dead or well on their way. No guards showed up to work. The cells were open, yet the pod unit was locked down. No way out of the jail. They stopped bringing in food and I started to ration and hide what little I had left. Of course, no one around me cared. They were too sick.

  There was nothing I could do for them. At first, I tried to administer help, water, whatever I could. It didn't work. Eventually as the numbers of sick overwhelmed me, I just stayed away.

  By the time power shut down, three men in my POD unit remained, aside from me. They died shortly after.

  After moving the bodies as far away from me as I could, I stayed more in the recreation area. The small one hoop basketball court, was open with high echoing walls and a barred ceiling with no glass. It was air I could breathe and air that didn't reek of death.

  The prospect of me getting out of there was dire. I tried everything I could. I could not get out.

  I was convinced when the last of my food ran out, I would just die. Suicide wasn't my thing, I'd wait it out until I was taken.

  I lived my life the best way I knew how. Always tried to be good and never mean. Treat people the right way. Within my soul, I carried that. Despite what happened around me, I was resolved that I did all I could.

  My destiny was to die and rot in that concrete hell. A broken and crushed man. I accepted that. Until that day, from nowhere, echoing across the empty city, I heard that squeaky wheel.

  THREE - FAYE

  To some, waking up to find yourself the last person on earth or at least believing that, would be a mental trauma. For some reason, it didn't bother me. I was on a course for answers as to what happened and then once satisfied, I'd end my life.

  Perhaps my attitude played a factor in wanting to leave Dodge behind when we met. I had no intention of traveling with him. He was filled with hope despite the dire circumstances.

  Having been in jail, left to die, Dodge was grateful when I helped him and conveyed an indebtedness. I just wanted to wander off alone to my home. However, I was glad for Dodge. More than I knew, I wasn't physically ready for any journey. He was the crutch I needed. He was strong and safe and thought ahead.

  Me, if left alone, had I made it home I doubted I would do what he did. He raided the neighboring homes for food, thought ahead about going south, planned for that and searched for survivors. If he and I were alive, so were others.

  I didn't care.

  He did.

  He found them.

  A gift I would eventually appreciate. We found Darie and George, brothers who survived. Nine and five years old. Where I shunned their affection and wanted distance, Dodge grasped at it. It was a focus and a chance to feel needed.

  What I didn't realize was all of it was attacking me, invading my heart and I wasn't aware.

  I wasn't alone anymore, even my neighbor Bud had survived. Dodge called out on the radio, the airwaves buzzed. People were indeed alive.

  Then came news of a survivor camp in Kentucky, so Dodge planned on going there. The camp was heading to the Panhandle in Florida where there were other survivors and research doctors.

  A pilgrimage leaving in 'X' amount of days.

  It wasn't for me. Dodge, Bud and the boys left and it wasn't until they were gone, along with a few subtle messages from Dodge, that I realized I wasn't ready to shuck life.

  I wasn't ready to give in. Those boys, those sweet little surviving boys had infiltrated my emotions and I didn't know it until they were gone.

  Dodge did.

  When I realized I made a mistake and wanted to go to Kentucky, I also realized how much Dodge knew that was going to happen. He had packed the car for me, with extra gas and a map all routed out.

  Along with a radio. Instructions on a post-it said Channel Seven.

  My house was my refuge, my sanctity. It held memories of my life and past, yet I left it behind, taking only a few items. Believing one day I would return.

  I made the trek of nine hundred miles, running into delays that shoved me hours behind.

  Chasing the schedule, I knew I was pushing it with the caravan. So I put it to fate. If they were gone it wasn't meant to be.

  When I arrived in Kentucky, the caravan of vehicles was indeed gone.

  But fate had played so many roles in my life since my family was killed, that it only seemed to reason it would chime in again.

  As I dropped to my knees in defeat, a voice called out to me.

  A young voice, male, he too had missed the caravan.

  Not only was it fate that he was there, it was fate that I had made contact once with the boy over the airwaves. I was the one who told him about the caravan to Kentucky.

  There he was. I decided he and I would find that caravan.

  And if I didn't believe in fate beforehand, my final decl
aration of fate came when I found out the boy's name. It was Tyler. And not just Tyler. It was Tyler Cash ... Dodge's son.

  FOUR - DODGE

  Admittedly, I went through a roller coaster of emotions and thoughts from the second we left Faye's house. Tucked away in an aging RV called Fastball, we hadn't rolled more than twenty miles and I was looking at that radio.

  Call, Faye, Call.

  She didn't. We were supposed to radio her but we hadn't heard anything, we all figured Faye wasn't coming. Or worse, Faye was dead. She checked out.

  The boys didn't know. For all Darie and George knew, Faye was leery about being the only woman.

  "Good thing she didn't come," George said when we arrived in Kentucky. "Ain't no women here. Guess she'll come when we find more women."

  There was a gate and one man stood post, he welcomed us. The radio voice we had become familiar with didn't live on base, but a mile away.

  Faye had said she worried that it was bad, that it was all a trap. No way no how was it a trap and I knew it when we arrived.

  A man named Sergeant Stockard, or Len as he asked us to call him, greeted us when we pulled over.

  "Man, am I glad to see you guys," he said, greeting us with a welcoming embrace, like an old friend.

  Len had pulled it together. He was on an aid station post until the very end and he gathered those who had survived. He double checked the dead, because some of them were only in comas and left behind, left for dead like Faye and Darie.

  "We have seventy-three survivors not including you guys," he told me as he showed me around.

  They were packing up, getting trucks ready. Using gas pumps powered by generators, like the one I had made, so they could siphon gas from the powerless fuel stations.

  "We made contact with the other camp a few weeks ago. Not long after everything died out," Len explained. "A CDC doctor who was testing immunity, started gathering people."

  "How many are in the Panhandle?"