- Text Size +
Chapter 24


Control.

That was something I loved to have. It was something I possessed once, before everything went down. When it all happened, I lost any semblance of control, and I almost couldn’t handle it. Seeing others lose control… I’m used to that. Things not going my way… I can handle that too, as long as I’m able to control what happens next. But that day, I lost everything. My life, my soon-to-have-been ex-wife, my son… Barty… my son…

Losing control.

It never would have happened before. Never. And even though it happens all the time now, it still hasn’t gotten any easier.



Saturday, April 14, 2012
2:00 p.m.


Cape Canaveral was normally only an hour’s drive from Orlando, but they’d been on the road for an hour and a half. Just trying to get out of Orlando had caused most of the delay. It wasn’t that everyone else was trying to the same… It was that everyone else had already tried to get out, and had died in the process.

Cars clogged the streets, some parked neatly in the middle of lanes, others stalled on the shoulders or in the medians, and still more crumpled against guardrails, trees, telephone poles, or other cars they’d collided into when their drivers had become incapacitated. In trying to navigate through this mess, they’d seen the bodies, many of them slumped over steering wheels, others simply lying on the ground. And in the quiet houses and darkened buildings they’d driven past, there were surely more. Many more.

At last, they’d made it to the interstate, where the congestion had gradually thinned the further they got from the city. Now the open road stretched before Howard, not entirely clear, but with enough lanes to allow him to weave in and out of the stopped vehicles in his way. He stared straight ahead, eyes on the road, both hands on the steering wheel, completely focused on his task. He gripped the wheel so tightly, his knuckles were white, and the veins bulged out from the backs of his hands. He did not allow his mind to wander.

Every now and then, he snuck a glance at his companion. Beside him in the passenger seat, the girl, Kayleigh, stared out her window with as much determination as he watched the road. She stared without really seeing, he suspected. In her reflection in the side mirror, her red-rimmed eyes appeared glazed, unfocused.

Howard was glad he was the one driving. Not that he would have even considered letting a woman – a college girl, at that – drive his custom, amethyst pearl Lexus, but he embraced the concentration needed to plot a course through the obstacles that stood between them and the coast. The cruise control was off, and so was the GPS; he drove the old-fashioned way, flooring the gas and relying on road signs to tell him how much further they had to go and what exits to take.

They had no exact destination and no definite plans. The drive so far had been quiet, silence permeated only by the occasional sniffle from Kayleigh’s side of the car. The sound of Howard’s hard swallowing seem extra loud in his own ears, but he allowed no other noise to escape him. He had expected the sorority girl to be chattier, even in the hysterical state in which he’d found her, and had been relieved when she had calmed down and lapsed into silence. He was not one for small talk, except when business required it, and he certainly didn’t want to talk about what he had seen in Orlando.

As the road signs indicated they were getting closer to Cape Canaveral, the unmoving traffic became more dense, and Howard was forced to slow down and concentrate even harder to navigate through it. He passed a convertible with its top down, a young couple slumped with their heads together in death, and steered around a stalled semi truck bearing the logo for Florida’s Natural Orange Juice. He stayed on the causeway for as long as possible, until it merged into Astronaut Boulevard and became congested with the cars of those who had died in the midst of their desperation to flee. Then he searched for side streets clear enough to drive on. Any would do; as long as they kept heading east, they would eventually reach the coast.

“So… what’s the plan?” Kayleigh asked, her voice cracking, as Howard passed a Circle K gas station and made a careful left onto a road called Harrison Avenue. Like in nearly every other American town, the side streets were named after the presidents. In this case, William Henry Harrison, whom Howard remembered only as the president who had died of a virus a mere month after his inauguration. It seemed a bad omen, but he didn’t say this out loud.

Instead, he slowed to a stop in the middle of the road. Even though he knew it was unnecessary, he couldn’t help but check the rearview mirror anxiously, in case there were any cars behind him. But of course, there weren’t. None moving, anyway. He glanced briefly at Kayleigh and then into the mirror again. Speaking for the first time in the last hour, he admitted, “I don’t know.” When Kayleigh didn’t reply, he elaborated, “I thought… I hoped that, maybe, it would be different here. You know, Cape Canaveral… it’s on the coast, it’s away from the mainland, and there’s the air force base and the space center… I thought here, if anywhere, there would be some order. But…” He looked around helplessly, the last of his hope slipping away.

Kayleigh answered his thoughts. “It looks the same as Orlando did, huh?”

Howard nodded, his throat closing up again.

“So what are we going to do?”

Normally, Howard enjoyed being looked to for answers. He was a CEO, a natural-born leader. He liked to be in charge, to have control. He hated not having the answers.

“We’ll look around,” he decided after a pause, making up his answer on the spot. “See if we can find any other survivors. Gather some supplies. And then… we’ll look for a boat.”

“A boat?”

“Well, it’s more practical than a plane, isn’t it? Unless you have a pilot’s license you haven’t mentioned?”

A faint, humorless chuckle. “No.”

“Okay, then. Neither do I, so flying’s out, unless we happen to find a pilot still alive. Anyone can operate a boat, though, so we’ll start there.” Howard’s mind worked ahead, imagining their next steps. “Travel by water will be easier than trying to drive, anyway. We’ll probably have more luck heading down the coast. If the whole Florida coastline seems affected, we’ll head to the Bahamas. It might not have spread to the islands.”

Kayleigh nodded. “Good a plan as any, I guess,” she said dully, shrugging, and sank lower in her seat. The dove gray leather made a noise that sounded like breaking wind as she repositioned herself, and before Howard could stop the thought from entering his mind, it did: Barty would have laughed at that.

He muffled the strangled cry that threatened to escape his throat by revving the engine, throwing the car back into drive. He pulled into an empty driveway and backed out again, turning in the opposite direction. “There was a gas station back there,” he forced himself to explain, feeling Kayleigh’s questioning eyes upon him. It was difficult to keep his voice steady. “We should stock up before we go much further. We may not find another one before we reach the coast.”

“Oh,” said Kayleigh.

It seemed he was going to be the one making all the decisions, but that was fine with him. As long he could keep thinking ahead, he could prevent himself from thinking back. Back to Orlando. Back to the house he’d built for Bree and Bartholomew. He never wanted to go back there again, in person or in his mind.

The drive back to the station was short, the car silent once again. Kayleigh resumed her stare out the window, and, despite his best efforts to control them, Howard’s thoughts drifted back to his son. The son he had found lifeless within his mother’s arms, both covered in the horrific purple lesions, a mockery of his favorite color and the trademark on the plague that seemed to have consumed Florida. It was a relief when he finally parked the car in one of the gas stalls, and the two stepped out.

Kayleigh watched him questionably as he slid his charge card, more to get the pump working than out of concern for payment, and then pumped his own car with gas. “Why are you doing that if we’re taking a boat?”

“Just in case there are no boats. I don’t know what’s going on; I just want to be prepared,” he answered shortly. As he finished, the lights on the screen displaying the price and gallons being pumped flickered sporadically. He placed the pump on the holder with a shrug. “Weird.”

The two headed inside the station, the lights illuminating the store flickering as well in the same manner. A quick glance at the counter answered their silent questions as to any other life around other than themselves. A man was slumped over the cash register, lifeless. Howard reached for one of the “Green method” cloth bags and started filling it up with any food he could grab.

“Try to get stuff that won’t perish easily; we don’t know how long we’ll be on there. Dry foods, lots of water, jerky, stuff like that.”

She nodded and headed for the coolers, as the lights finally shut down completely around them, encasing them in an eerie darkness, despite the sunlight shining through the windows. Kayleigh shrieked in surprise. “Why is the power out?”

He didn’t want to answer. “No one left to keep it on, if the roads are any indication… How far has this gone?” He was panicking, not where his companion could see it, but he was all the same. She watched him carefully, gauging his reactions. Control – he needed to keep control of himself. He forced his breathing to slow, to make himself relax. He could swear he felt his alarmingly high blood pressure finally take a dive back to normality.

Kayleigh nodded, wiping her eyes discreetly. He caught her gaze sneak down to her phone as she slipped it out of her pocket. Probably still trying to contact her family. He didn’t quite blame her; he wondered if she was an out of state student. That would make it worse, he felt, the not knowing. The hopes and guessing that came from a lack of knowledge and fear for your loved ones. He looked down in his bag, before sweeping half the rack filled with various types of jerky inside. They’d need it later. He did the same for crackers, and even grabbed a second bag to fill with cans of those travel fruit cups.

He had no idea what was to come, but he had a hunch they’d both be thankful for this stuff later. Kayleigh came back to him after a few minutes, holding two bags filled with nothing but various water bottles. He nodded and led the way out of the convenience store.

“Wait!” she cried, making him turn sharply back towards her.

“What?”

“We should pay…”

“Kayleigh, he’s dead; it won’t do any good.”

“Still, it doesn’t feel right.”

He rolled his eyes, not so much frustrated with her as with the hopelessness of the situation. It had hit him then. Money was worthless. Everything he worked for was worthless. Everything he had was gone. The realization slammed against his mind and shook him terribly. Howard set a bag down and reached for his wallet. He slapped a hundred dollar bill upon the counter, tucking it under a drink cup near the dead clerk’s hand.

“There. Now let’s go.”

Howard stowed their supplies neatly in the trunk, and they piled back into the car. They turned once more down Harrison Avenue and continued east, hoping they would run into a port with a boat once they reached the seaboard. “If my sense of direction is correct, I believe both the Air Force base and Kennedy Space Center are to the north,” Howard thought aloud as he drove. “I think we should follow the coast north first and check out both. If they’re as deserted as the rest of Cape Canaveral, then we’ll set a course southeast, toward the Bahamas.”

Kayleigh didn’t object. She was still staring out the window, and Howard wasn’t entirely sure she’d comprehended a word he had said. No matter. He was talking more for himself, anyway.

Harrison Avenue stretched only a few blocks across the narrow width of the cape, but it took Howard another half an hour just to reach its end, due to the cars parked on both sides of the street and abandoned in the middle. Worse yet, there was not a port at the shore, only a stretch of beach.

Howard sighed in dismay. “See any boats?”

Kayleigh looked left, then right. “Nope. But I do see water. Where there’s an ocean, there’s gotta be a boat. We just have to find one.”

Howard looked doubtfully into his rearview mirror, begrudging the thought of turning around and trying another side street. But when he reached for the gearshift to put the car in reverse, Kayleigh’s hand clamped down on his.

“Forget driving; let’s just go on foot.”

“On foot?” Howard repeated skeptically.

“Sure, on the beach. We shouldn’t have to go far.” Kayleigh was already opening her car door as she spoke. She climbed out, slamming the door shut behind her, and Howard had no choice but to follow suit. “Should we take the supplies now, or come back for them?”

Howard sighed as he remembered the bags they’d stuffed full of food and water. “I suppose we should just take them with us. If we do find a boat, we’ll want to leave as quickly as possible. Coming back to the car would only delay us.”

Kayleigh nodded. “Okay. Pop the trunk.”

Howard did so, and they split the load. Kayleigh took most of the food, leaving Howard to carry the water. As they set off for the sand, Howard took one, lingering look over his shoulder at his purple Lexus. He felt deeply uncomfortable about leaving it behind, just parked in the street that way, but he supposed Kayleigh was right. It would be quicker to just walk until they found a boat. Surely, there would be a dock with one nearby.

Before stepping onto the beach, Kayleigh stopped, set down her load, and removed her shoes. “What are you doing?” Howard asked, watching her slip her feet out of a pair of platform sandals, which, he noticed for the first time, were probably the most ridiculous choice of footwear he could imagine on a girl he’d found running down a street.

“Like I’m gonna walk through sand in these? No, thank you! Besides, it’s more fun to walk barefoot through the sand and feel it squish in your toes, don’t you think?” She offered him a girlish smile.

Howard shuddered inwardly. He hated the feel of anything squishing between his toes, except perhaps the foam of a nice, hot bubble bath, or the three-hundred thread count linen of his favorite bedsheets. He left his dress shoes on as he waded after her through the sand.

They walked north along the shoreline for about ten minutes, lugging their burdens, before they spotted a dock jutting out into the water, with a small yacht anchored next to it. Kayleigh immediately picked up her pace, hurrying toward the boat with a new spring in her step. Howard dragged along behind, wincing at the gritty feeling beneath his socks from the sand that had filled his shoes.

When he finally reached the dock, Kayleigh was already on the boat. “It’s perfect!” she shouted down from the deck. “Come on board!”

Feeling uncertain as to whether he would prefer this new, animated Kayleigh over the silent, sullen girl he’d driven there, Howard hauled his bags across the dock and stepped cautiously onto the yacht.

“Do you know how to drive this thing?” Kayleigh asked, as he set down the supplies and went to inspect the controls.

“It can’t be too difficult,” replied Howard with confidence. “We just need to find the key to start the engine…”

After half an hour of searching the yacht and knocking on the doors of the houses on the beach behind it, they gave up on finding the key. “We can find another boat instead,” insisted Howard, and he and Kayleigh continued north on foot.

On the next decent boat they came to, another small cabin cruiser, they found the key tucked under the driver’s seat. Praising his good fortune, Howard stuck it in the ignition and turned. The boat’s engine grinded and turned over once, before finally revving to life. The deck began to vibrate beneath their feet. Kayleigh gave a cheer.

Howard reached for the throttle and suddenly swore under his breath. Kayleigh’s smile disappeared. “What’s wrong?”

“Look at the fuel gauge,” Howard replied flatly.

Kayleigh looked. “It’s almost on empty? Ugh! Are you telling me we need to go and get gas for it?”

“Gas or diesel… it won’t matter, because we’re not getting either with the power out.”

“What do you mean?” Kayleigh cocked her head in confusion.

Howard felt impatient. “The gas pumps are powered by electricity,” he explained brusquely. “No power equals no pumping action, which means we can’t refuel.”

“Which means we’re up shit creek without a paddle,” Kayleigh added miserably. There was no humor in her voice, only despair. Howard could practically see the light of hope flicker and die in her eyes, which suddenly filled with tears.

In an instant, the Kayleigh who had briefly seemed to have forgotten the horrors of that morning was gone, replaced by a girl who went from weepy to hysterical. “This was stupid; this whole plan was stupid!” she cried. “We shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here! I should be back on campus, with my sisters… with Brad. They need me! They’re sick!”

“They’re dead,” Howard said without emotion. “They’re all dead.”

“No they’re not! Don’t say that!” Kayleigh cried, pushing at his shoulders. “Don’t you ever say such a thing!” She was irrational now, and he knew better than to fight her. Yet he didn’t know what to say to comfort her, either. Howard was not a man on whom tears had much effect, nor was he one who knew how to console a crying woman. Bree had been more of a screamer than a crier.

“Control yourself,” he told Kayleigh, not sharply, but firmly. “Hysterics aren’t going to help the situation.”

Control… always, he fought for control. But the situation was far out of his control, and Kayleigh wouldn’t stop crying. Feeling helpless, and bewildered by the feeling, Howard shrank back and watched her sob.

***