Black Parade (Beginnings Series Book 24) Read online

  Back to L.A.

  It was bad.

  I often thought as we went through the city, that I could only imagine New York. I wouldn’t want to go anywhere near New York, especially since that was the starting place of it all.

  If it was anything like Los Angeles, it was a nightmare.

  It was obvious panic had hit the street and the citizens. Storefronts were smashed, numerous buildings burned. Every police car I saw was over turned or vandalized.

  Bodies of the shot and beaten lined the streets, but no plague victims.

  It wasn’t as if the plague hit you and you dropped dead. People eventually got too sick to leave their homes.

  But those that felt well enough decided to go out with a vengeance.

  Traffic jams were everywhere as if people were trying to flee the city. To go where?

  People died in the cars at military check points. Check points were abandoned.

  One would think an earthquake had hit the city. It was destroyed.

  Destroyed but quiet.

  Occasionally a slight breeze would pick up, carrying a horrendous stench and a fluttering paper cup or rattling a can.

  No... wait. There was one other sound. One that was underlying and so consistent, it faded in our ears to the point we no longer paid attention nor heard it.

  Flies.

  There was a constant hum of flies.

  My father told me that for at least a month the smell would be unbearable. Until the bodies finished the putrefaction stage. In the heat of California the bodies baked and rotted.

  Eventually nature would disintegrate them to the point of bones, then dust. The dust would take a while.

  Then again, the cats were helping that process along nicely. Several times we saw cats gnawing on and eating flesh from the bodies of the dead. It was as if the smell of the putrid flesh was nothing but a dinner bell chiming for a feline gourmet meal.

  I really didn’t think we’d find anyone alive in Los Angeles, despite how big it was. I figured people either died of the plague, were killed in violence or left.

  But that was not the case. We found two people in the city and another forty-five in the outlying suburbs.

  We had water and food for people, but medical attention would have to wait until we got them back to camp.

  San Diego would have to wait anyhow. We had a full load.

  We did well.

  5.

  Life on the Hill

  I was one of the fortunate few. I had something to do. I know that sounds strange, but think about it. Imagine life with no television and nothing to do. Imagine how slowly time would pass and how quickly you could go out of your mind.

  The ‘searching’ for survivors kept me busy for the first six months. My father was kept busy serving as the town doctor. Others people worked on seedlings, hunting, cooking and sewing. But for the most part, folks really just sat around.

  We went back to basics.

  We had our storytellers. Those who would read aloud from books and some that told their own stories. We had a guitar player who entertained us.

  When the first spring came we all tended to our own gardens. We built what we could and were something like the pilgrims.

  Pilgrims with electricity.

  Times were tough though.

  The first year was the worst.

  We weeded through what we knew and didn’t know about medicine. A simple medical procedure, such as an appendectomy, was a death sentence. My father could treat, he couldn’t operate. The steadiest of hands were given a textbook. But we had infections.

  We lost twenty percent of our population that first year due to illness.

  Then came year two.

  Over three hundred people and only thirty-seven were women.

  Thirty-seven women.

  It wasn’t until the end of the first year when we had our first rape. Then our second … despite how we tried to protect our women, they were victimized. None of them wanted to live under lock and guard, but it seemed to be the only way to protect them.

  Even then, we had rapes.

  Rape and thievery were immediate grounds for execution.

  That was no secret either. Yet, the men did it. Soon, when a rape was committed, the culprit fled. We never saw him again.

  Our inner citizens weren’t our only threat. Within two years savagery started. There were people who banned together like us, but didn’t start a civilization. They roamed. Like locusts, they took what they could and moved on.

  The fights, violence and injuries, cost us even more.

  What had this world come to?

  Doing our best wasn’t good enough. We lived under constant threats.

  Being a designer and electrical engineer, I was called upon to try to come up with a solution. An alarm system.

  I was able to make a tracking system. Because of our locale, an encompassing one was difficult, so I designed handheld ones made from old game units.

  We had four men perched as lookouts. North, south, east and west.

  Each had a tracking device when they were on duty.

  The tracker picked up everything over fifty pounds, animals included, which was annoying at times, but a necessary safeguard.

  We were alerted of anything that moved within a hundred feet.

  That prepared us for attacks.

  A pilgrimage to another location was discussed, but a community vote determined we’d stay put.

  Where else would we go? Wouldn’t it be the same everywhere and we’d just have to start over?

  “What about Utopia?”

  I remember the day a newer guy said that.

  Utopia. This was about the tenth time we’d heard of it.

  Utopia had become an urban legend.

  This great place, somewhere hidden, where they had secure living, medical attention, plenty of food and society had started all over again.

  A perfect world.

  Rumors of Utopia began about year three.

  We dismissed them as hearsay, but nonetheless we enjoyed hearing the tales.

  Two years after we stopped looking for people, Bentley and I decided to go on a search.

  It was the last one we did.

  Packs of savages now ran rampant and it was no longer safe. They hit you by surprise.

  We happened upon this man named Kirk. He was running from this new breed of self inflicted mental mutants.

  He was the most adamant about Utopia. He claimed he’d been there, lived there and was kicked out because he didn’t belong.

  The location of Utopia wasn’t known. Those taken there never saw where it was and when they took you out; they knocked you out and dropped you somewhere.

  You had to fit in, look a certain way, go through some sort of training, and if you failed you were tossed out.

  I thought that was ridiculous.

  After Kirk, we heard similar stories from others.

  Utopia by definition means a perfect world, and if this place did exist they were trying to create it.

  A perfect world in a plague ravished world?

  That alone made me dismiss the existence of this Utopia. To me it was a place made up, like a goal in life, an aim for some.

  Find Utopia.

  I didn’t need to.

  Civilization was hit with a plague and had gone mad.

  For me, Utopia would be taking a bad situation and making it the best you could. Even if there was turmoil. That’s what we did.

  To me the real Utopia was Gray’s mountain. Our community.

  We had our violence, illness and crime, but it was the best place to be.

  The only place to be.

  And I was there for the duration of my life.

  6.

  The Hit

  If nothing else, the one thing that could be said about the folks on Gray's Mountain was that we had great hair.

  I was always a fanatic about my hair. Since my parents let me grow it out from the crew cut phase. I made sure I used the
best products to keep my hair shiny, manageable and perfect.

  As a hair fanatic, it would only figure that my best friend was a barber.

  I remember early on bringing up the hair care product dilemma to Bentley. I kept telling him he had to invent new stuff. Shampoo. Conditioners. A hair spray product.

  His response was, “I’m a barber, not a stylist.’

  “What’s the difference?”

  Then he explained that he never learned the ins and outs of hair and what worked or what didn’t.

  But as time passed, Bentley learned.

  He became ‘the man’. He was always learning, experimenting and creating.

  The best time was the summer that everyone changed their hair color. Everyone but me, that is. Bentley was inventing new hair colors out of nature, even highlights.

  Even my father volunteered to try. Of course, it was pretty funny when his hair turned pink.

  He said, “I feel youthful, Daniel. Perhaps now is the time for me to learn a musical instrument.”

  He kept that color until it faded and disappeared.

  Everyone went to Bentley to get their hair done. As if we had any other places to go.

  Once a month it was ‘up do’ day. That's w hen the women would wear their hair in ‘up’ styles.

  Crazy.

  But when there’s nothing much going on, that’s what you did.

  Except for me. Even as crazy and concerned as I was about being in style in the old days, I wasn’t in the post apocalyptic world. In fact, I let my hair grow long.

  Don’t get me wrong, it was still the shiniest, most manageable head of hair on Gray Mountain, but it was long.

  I went to Bentley to get it cut only to bring it to my shoulder blades.

  Hair grows quite a bit in five years.

  My father would call me Daniel Dynasty, saying I looked like a Chinese warrior and since I had honed my martial arts skills in fighting the savages, the name fit.

  Always asking me when I was going to cut my hair, I jokingly replied, “When I get to Utopia.”

  In fact, that was a running joke for me.

  I’d cut my hair when I knew I was going to Utopia. Then I built on that. I actually made a Utopia box. A gag, that people talked about. I’d add things as I thought about it, but it in was clothing tightly sealed in plastic. A white shirt, gray dress pants and a black tie. A bottle of cologne, brush, hair care and hold products and a gold chain. Everything I needed to make myself look Utopian proper when I entered their gates.

  It was funny.

  An apocalyptic world and a utopian box to transform myself into GQ Danny.

  Pause.

  I guess you had to be there.

  The day I deemed the last day on Gray Mountain, ironically started out with a rabbit’s foot.

  “Got something for your Utopia box,” Bentley said, dangling the object by a string.

  “A rabbit’s foot,” I said. “Why would I need a rabbit’s foot for my box?”

  “Never know when you might need luck.”

  I grasped the foot and laughed. “I’ll think about it.”

  “I got that myself. Sucked out the blood so it wouldn’t stink …”

  “Bent.” I shook my head.

  “So speaking about rabbit’s feet.”

  I knew it. I knew it.

  He was in the mood.

  There was a difference in rabbit hunting with Bentley. There was the ‘needful’ hunting, and then there was the ‘in the mood’ hunting.

  Going out to rabbit hunt with Bentley was uneventful. Sometimes he invited me, sometimes not. But he needed me there for the “in the mood” kind.

  Bentley made this concoction called pickled rabbit. Only it wasn’t pickled at all like you’d imagine. It was weird. It was cooked in garlic with the meat cut up in tiny pieces, and then he’d gel the garlic water. It looked gross. You know those gelatin molds with fruit? Well this was close, only with a murky white gel, and instead of fruit, there were bits of rabbit. Then he’d salt it.

  Gag.

  Don’t get me wrong, when it cooked it smelled good and everyone in the community knew he was cooking it. They’d salivate with desire, putting in their order for a piece of gelled pickled rabbit.

  But to make it, Bentley needed a special type of rabbit. It had to look a special way and he said that was the secret.

  The darker the rabbit, the more wild and bitter the meat. So we had to hunt for fair or light rabbits.

  And they had to be fat.

  Great.

  I was lucky for him, I was able to spot those bad boys easily and they were hard to find. There weren’t many. We had to find them and trap them.

  Not easy at all.

  “Come on, Danny,” Bentley beckoned. “I’ll save you the first piece.” He winked.

  “Ug.” I winced. “Fine.”

  I went. I donned my hunting clothes and armed with the trap we headed up the mountain.

  That was at seven in the morning.

  By three in the afternoon we still hadn’t had any luck.

  Not that we didn’t find a few light, fat, rabbits.

  We did. We caught them. But then Bentley would grab them by the scruff and sniff them as if he could tell the quality of flavor by that.

  Give me a break.

  I thought the fifth catch was it. Bentley did a double sniff. Then he shook his head and set the rabbit free.

  “Ah, Bent, you suck. That was perfect.”

  “He was tough. The meat wouldn't be right.”

  I took a look at Bentley, a man who when everyone else got thin gained weight. I supposed it was from eating the right rabbits. “I quit,” I said.

  “No. No. Just a bit more. It’s here. The rabbit is here. I know it is. Danny, he probably went and told his friend right now. He said…” Bentley softened his voice and crinkled his nose. “Guys, guys, there’s a free carrot for ya over there. All you gotta do is get caught and they set you free. Honest.”

  “Did you just crinkle your nose like you had whiskers?”

  “I was being a rabbit.”

  “You’re whacked.” I chuckled. “And I’m taking a break. I need to.”

  “A spiritual break, Danny?”

  “Um, yeah.”

  Bentley chuckled. “I’m in. You got the good stuff from your dad?”

  I gave him a look that all but said, would I have anything else.

  The spiritual stuff was an herb my father smoked for relaxation. No it wasn’t marijuana, but it definitely had a similar effect.

  To get the full effect, at least for me, I needed to peer out into a wide open space. So we tromped on for a spell until we found a clearing which gave us an exhilarating view of the other side of the mountain.

  I dropped to the ground and pulled out the pipe, packing it while waiting on Bentley to arrive.

  He did. But not as I expected.

  “Whoa. Whoa. Whoa,” he said. “Get low Dan. What’s this?”

  I stuttered a ‘huh’ at his new lingo. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Get low? When he pushed on my back, I noticed he was on his stomach, inching over to crawl behind a bush.

  It wasn’t until I laughed at him that I saw it.

  Or rather saw what he did.

  At the foot of the mountain, on the roadway that passed between us and the route to our community about ten miles back, was what looked like a military convoy.

  They were at a standstill, eight trucks. Multitudes of soldiers, all standing there. A few tents were erected, and from where we were I could see a couple men moving, but most of them stood still.

  I grabbed my binoculars for a closer look.

  I was correct in my first assessment.

  People rarely left Gray Mountain, and even more rarely traveled that road.

  Hell, that convoy could have been there for days and no one noticed.

  “They look like zombies,” I said, handing the binoculars to Bentley.

  “You know, I’d laugh at that, if a plague hadn’t
wiped out the world.”

  “Omega Man?” I asked.

  “Yep. They could be zombies.”

  “Doubtful.”

  Bentley examined them. “They’re just standing there.”

  “Armed?”

  “Very much so.”

  “I can’t zoom in but they all have a blank expression,” I told him. “Is that military protocol? You know, to stand there with weapons ready, staring blankly?”

  “No military protocol that I know of. They aren’t at parade rest or attention. This is weird.” He handed me the binoculars and rolled on his side.

  “What do you make of it?”

  Bentley shook his head. “I don’t know. But I do think we should head on down and let Gray know of this. See what he thinks.”

  “Good idea. Sorry, we have to cut the perfect hunt short.”

  “This is a bit more important.”

  We scooted back, staying low until we reached the safety of the trees and leaving our gear behind, we headed down to the town.

  Our news was not a surprise. While Bentley and I were traipsing in the woods looking for the perfect Bunny fu-fu to pickle, our little community was paid a visit.

  A man in a suit showed up, accompanied by four soldiers in camouflage. The camouflage struck me as odd. In fact, I recall thinking they were foreign, perhaps from another country. I didn’t see a US flag at all, or the wording US ARMY.

  I did however, see a gold patch on the arm, bearing the letters CS.

  I was told I was incorrect. That these men were indeed from the United States government. And that a fellow named Jeremy was an ambassador.

  The President had survived and it just took that many years to put things in order.

  The US was back on its feet. Or on its way, and needed survivors to start tasks. Repopulating, farming, the military, you name it.

  Everyone was excited. They were cheering this. One man shouted, “We’ve been rescued!”

  Rescued.

  As if we were stranded on a deserted island or something.

  How in the world could you claim rescue in this situation?

  It was a plague ravished world.

  The government was rounding up people for civilization.

  Everyone was ecstatic.

  So why wasn’t I?

  It felt wrong to me. It just didn’t set right.