The Onyx Seed - A Story of Survival by Clifford Beck - HTML preview

Chapter 11

Getting to the highway intersection seemed to take forever. But the return trip made both of them feel as though they had somehow circumvented time itself. In the world of before, life moved at near light speed. If you were unable to jump aboard the speeding train of a day’s pace, it would surely run you down. Los Angeles never took prisoners. Now, there was an escape hatch and L.A. was no longer a death trap.

They arrived at the back of the apartment building only twenty minutes from the time they left the intersection. Marty started his way up the back stairs, carrying both the mountain bike and his pack. The Army had served him well, not only making him emotionally strong but physically as well, and he had maintained himself even after he had been discharged. Lucas, on the other hand, was having trouble balancing the fifty pounds he had strapped to his back. Managing this load while on a mountain bike wasn’t an issue. The problem was walking. And as soon as he dismounted, the weight of the pack grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him to the ground.

“You okay?” Marty asked.

Lucas struggled to get back to his feet, not realizing that he could simply release the plastic buckles of the waist belt and chest harness.

“Oh, yeah,” he answered comically. “I carry fifty pounds on my back all the time.”

Marty reached down and unclipped the buckles as he helped him to his feet.

“Looks like we’ve got to get you in shape,” he said jokingly.

“Yeah,” Lucas replied. “I’ll get right on that.” Once in the apartment, the mountain bikes were put aside. Marty dumped the contents of both packs on the floor and began inventorying everything against the list. There were still a few things they still needed and all the essentials were there. Two small insulated tents, cold weather sleeping bags and mats, cooking gear, canteens, water filters, and freeze-dried food. Marty had also thought to pick up a trail guide, some topographical maps, and a compass, in addition to a GPS receiver.

He’d suddenly been struck with the idea that without human support, the network of GPS satellites would eventually drift from their orbits and fall out of the sky. However, Marty didn’t think this would happen anytime soon. Yet, all things taken into consideration, he knew that any remaining technology would eventually fail. Until then, he would take full advantage of it. The compass was simply a backup plan for the inevitable the receiver could always get lost or destroyed. Everything was organized, with the most critical items near the top of each pack. The first aid and survival kits had to be readily accessible, while everything else was packed according to an even distribution of weight.

By three-thirty in the morning, everything had been organized. Now, there was one more item they needed. Water. Marty had made it a priority. But in the rush to gather supplies and equipment, the need for water somehow got set aside.

“Shit!” Marty said. “We forgot water.”

“There’s a gas station a few blocks from here,” Lucas said. “We can some there.”

“I know exactly where it is,” Marty replied. “Do you want to walk or do we take the bikes down?” Lucas asked.

“How about this,” Marty said. “I’ll go down to the gas station and you stay here and keep an eye on our gear.”

Lucas hesitated as Marty walked toward the back door.

“Um, Marty,” he began. “I don’t mean to sound like a pussy but with the way things are, sitting here in the dark kind of creeps me out.”

Marty paused at the door, suddenly remembering what it was like to sit in the darkness of the desert night with nothing over his head but the cold, star-strewn sky of Iraq. Back then, the enemy was everywhere yet rarely seen. Now, history was repeating itself as an invisible enemy seemed to be going out of its way to destroy everything in its path. “Yeah, me too,” Marty said. “Come on, let’s go get some water.”

Leaving through the back entrance again, Marty was especially vigilant. Now they had something that could be taken from them. He stopped Lucas just outside the back door, bringing a hand up in a request for quiet. The air felt dead and heavy, as the crushing silence of the L.A. night imposed itself on Marty’s senses. The hollow, empty sound of a morgue would have been more comforting. There was nothing to see. There was nothing to hear. The only sensation that made itself available to them was the cool Pacific breeze that wound its way around the city’s dark, lifeless streets. It ran through alleys, behind stores and tenement buildings as though searching for something it would never find. Standing in the darkness, Marty and Lucas felt its gentle kiss as it wafted up, touching their faces like the soft fingertips of a beautiful woman.

Cautiously, they made their way to the end of the alley where the street lay quietly stretched out in front of them. Marty was no longer bothered by the black emptiness that hovered over the city. What he found frightening were the things that eluded his senses. The unlit city reminded him that there were certainly others who had survived the infection. And, like Marty and Lucas, they could be just around the corner, hiding in the shadows. They retreated to the back of the building and found their way through the parking lots, alleys and walkways. Ten minutes later, they sat crouched behind a guard rail that lined the perimeter of the gas station. And like all gas stations, it doubled as a small convenience store. It wasn’t very big or well-stocked, but there was one item every gas station and convenience store carried. Bottled water. Lucas was quickly becoming astute in his ability to move silently, and again, Marty became startled by his quiet presence. They whispered back and forth about what they saw, scanning the area for any sign of movement. Marty motioned toward the back of the gas station. Lucas nodded as he followed him around the backside of the metal barrier that edged the property. Stepping over it, they quickly walked through the darkness and up against the back of the small steel building. Staying near the outer wall, Marty motioned for Lucas to follow him. They crept along the side of the building and stopping at the front corner, scanned the area again. He found it odd that there were no cars in front of the pumps and the small parking lot was devoid of any other vehicles, save for one. Not knowing if the door was locked, Marty darted around the front corner and grasped its brushed aluminum handle. He knew that he was taking a chance of being seen. But survival isn’t accomplished without risks. It pulled open easily and Marty, again, motioned for Lucas to follow him in.

As they entered, he tried not to think about what he might have done, had the door been locked or how far they would have gone to find another store. The gas station was as black as the rest of the city and finding their way around was difficult. Marty’s only immediate concern was the car in the parking lot. Considering that the door had been left unlocked, Marty was suspicious that they may not be alone. “Where do you think the clerk is?” Lucas asked in a whisper.

“I don’t know,” Marty answered. “But if there was someone else here, we’d probably know it by now.” He asked Lucas to stay somewhere between the register and the door, watching for any movement outside while he searched the store. Within only a few minutes, Marty located four one-gallon jugs of bottled water. They would each carry two.

He was on his way back to the door, carrying two of the jugs when Lucas suddenly became startled by a faint movement coming from a window across the street.

“Shit!” he said.

Marty stopped just short of the cashier’s desk, setting the plastic jugs on the floor.

“What is it?” he whispered.

“Fuck!” Lucas said.

He sat between the door and the cashier’s desk, his eyes wide with a sudden, fearful expression. “Someone’s watching us.”

Marty ducked his head, went around the back of the desk, and came up behind him.

“What did you see?” he asked.

Lucas pointed to an apartment building across the street. Its facade was white marble and looked as if it had seen many decades of history. The windows were dark and empty, but could easily draw one’s imagination into a world haunted by all manner of souls in varying states of unrest.

“In the window, two floors up,” Lucas answered. Marty studied each window.

“I don’t see anything,” he said.

But, within the next moment, Marty saw it too. He thought it may have been the darkness playing tricks on his eyes, or the isolation left behind by the sudden absence of humanity.

“There!” Lucas said. “Did you see that?! What the fuck do we do?!”

They had both seen it. A dingy white curtain had been moved aside by mere inches, then allowed to fall back. There was no face to be seen behind the window, no hand to push the curtain back. Its ghostly motion could not be explained by anything other than an observing presence, hidden behind the darkened pane of glass.

Shit! Marty said.

He paused a moment to clear his head. The Iraqi desert taught him that he could think his way out of anything, as long as he kept his head on straight. Having approached the gas station from the rear, Marty knew there was no back door with no other way out than the way they got in and Marty, now assumed that they had already been seen by whoever was behind the curtain. They needed to leave before their mysterious onlooker could make a more personal appearance. A thousand thoughts coursed through his mind. Were they a carrier of the infection? Were they armed? Had they tipped over the edge of their sanity? Marty didn’t want to wait for his questions to be answered and Lucas was becoming more panicked by the second. The urgency to leave forced Marty to abandon the other two gallon jugs of water he meant to retrieve. They would only have half the water they intended, but what they did have was enough for the essentials. Mostly for drinking. They would get more once they arrived in Whittier. The stranger in the window remained faceless. It was likely that some survivors had been reduced to the instinctive fear typical of a wild animal. They had become as afraid of others as others were of them, their fear trapping them in the darkness of what was once the haven of home. They would likely remain isolated shut-ins. Eventually, they would run out of food and die, never having taken the risk to so much as wander away from the fetal position to look for even the smallest amount of clean water. The simple idea of scavenging was just too terrifying. For these people, living in fear and dying of fear were the same.

Some would say that our single greatest fear is that of the unknown. From the beginning, Lucas felt himself becoming entangled in its thin strands. He didn’t have the benefit of Marty’s training and experience, nor did he possess the emotional strength to ward off the silent demons of the darkness. He would never fully realize that one’s demons are always where one leaves them and that the greatest work of fiction is the belief that they control us. Lucas found himself trembling uncontrollably as his imagination began to produce one terrifying scenario after another. So far, it had been just the two of them and there had been no indication of any other survivors. But in his imagination, he now saw them everywhere. They stood in the streets. They crawled out from the alleys and reached out from curbside sewer drains. He heard the slow creak of rusty hinges as they peeked their frozen faces out from doorways and gated yards. Lucas was suddenly startled back to the darkness of the store by the sound of Marty’s voice. “Luke, we’ve got to get out of here!” Marty had momentarily gone back around the cashier’s desk and retrieved the jugs of water. “Here, take this,” he said.

“Oh, right,” Lucas replied.

Marty briefly put a hand on his shoulder in an attempt to get him focused.

“Luke,” he began. “I know you’re scared but I need you to stay sharp, okay?”

Lucas nodded as he followed Marty out of the gas station, yet silently cursed himself for having come so close to a state of paranoid panic. Step by step, they backtracked their way through the city. Back through the alleys and side streets, past places dark enough to frighten even the most fearless rat. L.A. was terrifying enough before the infection. Now, it looked like another planet. Cold, inhospitable and vacuous. Marty and Lucas finally found themselves climbing the back stairs that led to their apartment.

Once inside, Lucas was quick to jam a chair under the knob of both the front and back doors. With his back against the wall, he slid down to a sitting position. Resting his elbows on his knees and his hands on his head.

“Fuck!” he said.

He was still trembling. His mind still racing with thoughts of the unimaginable.

“I don’t know if I can do this, Marty.” His body began rocking back and forth slightly as every misshapen form of fear crawled out of the shadows and congealed into a single, indistinct thing. Taking possession of Lucas’s ability to reason. He had allowed the darkness to birth his own demons. And he would either slay them or feel his soul torn apart by them. His breathing suddenly quickened as the night’s events caught up to him. “I’m sorry,” he said, in a tearful voice. “I screwed up.”

Marty knelt down next to him.

“Luke,” he began. “How could you screw it up? You were doing exactly what you were supposed to.” He was trying to be comforting and, at the same time, boost his confidence.

“You got the job done. And whatever that was in the window, you saw it first. Luke, I can’t do everything. I need you at my back, alright?”

Lucas nodded his head.

“Okay,” he said.

Marty put a hand on his shoulder, trying to get him to see that, in spite of his fearful reaction, they had still accomplished their goal.

“Lucas,” he said. “You did good out there.”

“Thanks,” Lucas replied. “But I’m not like you. You’re not afraid of anything. You were in the Army. You’ve been through a fucking war.”

Marty got up and sat in front of him. He took a moment to carefully choose his words.

“Luke,” he began. “Yeah, I’ve been through some shit but nothing like this. I expected to come back and have some problems adjusting. But I didn’t think I’d be fighting anything like this. Now, was I scared back in Iraq? Fuck yeah. But fear keeps you alive. But this shit? Luke, I’m fucking terrified. I don’t have any more idea what’s around next the corner than you. Why do you think I want to leave so badly? I want to get the fuck out of here just as much as you do.” Marty paused a moment to read the expression on Lucas’ face. He seemed to be calming down, releasing a deep sigh of tension.

“I just wish I was handling this better,” Lucas said. “I feel like I’m losing it.”

Marty gave him a friendly slap against the shoulder. “Luke, you’re doing just fine. If you weren’t scared, I’d be really worried that you were falling apart, okay?”

Lucas nodded again, wiping the tears from his face. “I feel like a fucking idiot,” he said. Marty was already on his way down the hall when he turned back, pointing out something that should have been obvious.

"Hey, there are probably people out there who are a lot more scared than us, right now. Remember, we’re not alone, they are."

Lucas knew he was right, but he also had a good idea of what his situation would be without Marty’s experience and strength.

“Yeah,” he began. “But you’re the one with all the Army training.”

Marty interrupted him in mid-sentence.

“And I’m going to teach you everything I know. But what you need to start doing is finding your strength. That’s what’s going to get you through this shit, alright? Now, how about some coffee?” Lucas got up from the floor and followed Marty into the kitchen.

“Have a seat,” Marty said. “Let me show you how to do this.”

Lucas watched in rapt attention as Marty connected the small camping stove to a butane canister. He heard the hiss of gas as it made its way through the stoves woven metal tube, watching as a small circular set of flames came to life on the burner. “Looks pretty easy,” Lucas said.

Marty continued, measuring water into the stainless steel coffee pot and filling the strainer with coffee. “I’m glad you think so,” Marty replied. “Because you’re doing this tomorrow night.” He opened the nearest window and set the stove next to the sill, allowing the butane fumes to escape. Finally, he set the stove's windscreen carefully around the burner.

“What’s that?” Lucas asked.

Marty placed the pot on the stove. “It’s a windscreen,” he replied. “It keeps the wind from blowing out the burner. It also keeps people from seeing the flame.”

The windscreen was designed only as protection from the wind. But in their situation, it also helped to maintain a low visibility. Lucas memorized the entire process, with the assumption that there were many other skills he would have to learn. After a few minutes, the smell of hot coffee filled the kitchen. Marty turned off the stove and closed the window as he further instructed Lucas to never blow out the burner.

“Just turn the gas off.”

He moved the stove from the window to the middle of the kitchen table, before the two of them left for what had become the common area. With coffee in hand, they sat on the floor after being certain that the blanket still securely blocked the window. As during the night before, Marty turned on a flashlight and set it in the middle of the floor, pointing it at the ceiling. Its reflection cast an eerie glow around the room as Marty and Lucas took the first sips of coffee they’d had in two or three days. Lucas closed his eyes and leaned his back against the wall.

“Holy shit,” he said. “It’s good to know that with all the shit that’s happened, we don’t necessarily have to live like pigs, as long as we can get coffee.” He took another sip. Black coffee was better than none at all. Marty listened closely to how Lucas spoke. He seemed much more relaxed than he was ten minutes before. Sometimes, the simplest comforts can act as an insulator from some of life’s cruelest tricks. The fall of civilization by disease certainly being among them. But this insulation was, at best, a thin band-aid and would easily be torn away by the harshness of the world outside. Beyond the steaming comfort a hot cup of coffee could bring. Lucas deeply exhaled any remaining tension as the coffee’s warmth slowly began to take its place.

“So, what’s next?” he asked. “Are we still going to Whittier? Because I don’t mind the idea of getting as far from this shit hole as possible and if you want to go farther than Whittier, that’s okay with me.”

“Actually,” Marty began. “I chose Whittier for a couple of reasons. It’s small, it’s not L.A. and that’s where the Hellman Wilderness Park is. Plus, it’s a college town, so we can get a car and stock up for the trip east.”

Lucas smiled and nodded in approval. “That’s fucking brilliant,” he said. Marty raised his coffee mug in gratitude. “Thank you,” he replied. “Now, as long as we can stay off the main roads, we should be fine.” Lucas turned in as soon as he finished his coffee, while Marty decided to, again, withdraw to his room. He sat on his bed staring at the blank T.V. screen, wondering what was happening in other parts of the world. Had other countries been affected by the infection? And what about this country? Was it just L.A.? He wondered if the entire world had fallen apart. How many people had been left behind? The world had never truly been a safe place. But at least, it had been predictable. Now, even that was gone. Marty drifted off to sleep as the night sky started to lighten and the morning sun began its daily rise over the mountains, just east of L.A. They planned to leave for Whittier after sunset. Beyond that, the unpredictability of the new world would continue its relentless pursuit as they began their journey to find a place of sanctuary, a safe place to call home.