Pockets Full of Posey

Chapter 1: Preparation

Graelen Johnston stood atop a seven-story apartment building and took out his binoculars. He peered intently about him, looking for any signs of life, any signs of danger. People were becoming fewer and farther between and ones who kept their wits about them fewer still. Bueller? Bueller? He chuckled as his voice broke the stillness. He scanned the horizon.

He saw a wisp of smoke in the distance, perhaps a campfire, and decided to take a closer look. He made a note of the direction and headed back down the fire escape to his camper, parked next door at the gas station. The tank was almost full, and he filled up one of his generators as well as a spare. He unhooked his other generator from the station’s electrical box and lugged it back to the camper to strap it onto the rack he'd welded to hold it.

He went inside and grabbed a bag of chips and a soda. It was warm, but he put it in the camper’s fridge. He turned the keys and the engine roared to life. This was his first trek into civilization in a couple of months, and he was both wary of what he might find, and shocked at the sheer desolation of what used to be such a thriving city.

When the plague first hit, no one was sure what was happening. First, the sick and elderly started dying, then children, then everyone else. Nowhere on earth was spared, and most people rushed to the nearest cities, hoping rumors of a cure at this hospital or that were true.

Graelen was a retired Navy SEAL. He didn’t know much about diseases, but he knew plenty about desperate people. He gathered his three children and a few necessities and headed out into the woods, where they camped as a family every summer for the past fifteen years.

The campground was abandoned. They set up residence in one of the log cabins, which overlooked a lake, recently stocked with plenty of bass and catfish to feed the four of them indefinitely, if necessary. He kept close tabs on the news, which reported worldwide rioting for weeks, as it became more and more obvious no cure was imminent. The last news report he could find on his crank radio was a month ago.

The reporter, in the last throes of the disease himself, stated calmly that all estimates of the Mollivirus Sibericum’s death toll were well above 99.9%. All hope was lost, and those who were still alive should go home and be with their loved ones in their final hours.

Graelen observed to his son, Ironic statement, from a man apparently intending to die on the job. He remembered how they laughed together, a rare respite in the tragedy.

For a couple of weeks after the last report, it looked like his family was spared. But then, fourteen-year-old Chelsea started coughing, and her body broke out in the tell-tale rash that started under her arms and spread to her ears and mouth. Graelen took her to another cabin for two days as she vomited blood and cried before succumbing on the third day.

He buried her, burned his clothes, and bathed in alcohol from the first aid kits on the property before he ventured back to the cabin. It was too late. Eighteen-year-old Robin held his youngest sister’s body in his arms and wept apologies to his father for not helping her.

Graelen took his eldest in his arms, his fingers brushing the open sores in his hair, and prayed God would take him, and spare his child. He buried them both the next day, twelve-year-old Rose’s body still wrapped in her big brother’s arms. He stood over their grave for hours.

God, Cheryl, he whispered to his late wife in the stillness, I'm glad you weren’t here to see this. I’m so sorry I couldn’t protect our babies.

Graelen waited around for two more weeks waiting to get sick. He ate with the kids’ utensils, held their clothes and breathed in the scent of them, slept with Rose’s teddy bear. For reasons he couldn’t comprehend, he seemed to be immune.

When numbness began to set in, his military training kicked him into gear. There might be others out there like him, spared, but alone in the maddening silence. He threw clothes into the back seat of his pickup, and headed into the nearest town.

His wife hadn’t allowed assault weapons in the house, and he needed more than the pistols and shotgun he currently owned. He stopped at several pawn shops, which had been thoroughly looted. In the back office of one, he was able to find a couple rifles and an AR-15 for defense, as well as camping equipment in a storage room.

A nearby dealership provided him with a recreational vehicle, so he was mobile and off the grid. He stocked up on food, but figured there should be plenty in every grocery and convenience store no matter where he went. He wouldn’t starve for a couple of years or more. By then, he hoped to find other survivors and form a long-term plan.

Not everyone would be rational, so he stopped by the local police station and grabbed several SWAT uniforms. It took him a while to find one sufficient to cover his six foot four inch frame completely. A search of the locker room finally scored him two that would work.

The electric grid was down, and with a crowbar and a few well-aimed shots, he was able to break into the weapons arsenal as well. Now he felt prepared in case he ran across someone less than social. He put everything but his handguns away in different parts of his camper. He kept two pistols holstered, with two more in the sink for easy access.

The first person he found was a young college coed wandering down the middle of the highway. He pulled his camper up alongside her and offered her a ride and food. She looked at him, dazed, like he was a mirage, but eventually took his hand and came aboard.

He turned his back to close the door and stood up to see her with one of his guns in her hand. She shot herself before he could process what happened, and his ears rang for a week. She had no identification—he never even knew her name. He found another camper in the next town and made sure his guns were completely hidden this time.

A few days later, he ran into an older man, Freddie, with whom he travelled for a couple weeks. Freddie was a fifty-five year old plumber who lost his wife a year before the plague to pancreatic cancer. His mind was clear, and he seemed to handle the trauma of the plague, but he was sick with something else. He complained of headaches and abdominal pain, vomited, slept all day.

Graelen was no doctor, but he stopped by the library to do research. He didn’t think he could bear to lose another person, but the symptoms fit too many diseases. Probably nothing he could have done anyway.

He buried Freddie along the highway. That was a month ago. He saw evidence of people still living, but hadn't found anyone else since.

By the time he reached the approximate area where he saw the wisp of smoke, it disappeared. He was in an upper-class neighborhood, surrounded by two-story residences which once must've cost well over a million dollars each.

Well, you gotta be around here somewhere, he said, hoping he hadn’t just imagined it. Graelen pulled on a bullet-proof vest, helmet, and goggles, and put an assault rifle over his shoulder along with a couple extra clips in his belt. His pistols were holstered, and he tucked a knife into his steel-toed boots. He donned a pair of hunting earphones that muffled shots and amplified everything else and listened carefully. He heard voices north of his position, and smiled.

Gotcha. He quietly headed toward them.

He came to a gate standing ajar, and heard several men’s voices, whooping and hollering inside. Graelen peered through the opening. He couldn’t really see much except for a couple of men standing with their backs to him. One threw down a beer bottle, which exploded into a thousand pieces, some of them skipping into the green swimming pool.

Graelen hesitated. The smart thing to do with be to recon the area. However, eagerness overcame his reserve, and he knocked loudly on the gate as he walked inside.

Anyone home? he asked. A thud in his stomach knocked him down and took his breath away, and he looked up to see three men running away, one with a pistol in his hand. Wait! he called painfully after them. I’m just… It was too late. The men were gone.

Graelen stood up slowly, and took a few steps after them, until a noise to his left caught his attention. To his horror, he realized what the men were doing. A woman lay naked, her wrists tied to a clothesline post, one of them broken. She was lying in a fetal position in a pool of blood, her skin bruised and cut on nearly every square inch of her body. Graelen rushed to her, and freed her hands with his knife.

He swept her up, kicked down the back door of the house, and took her into one of the bedrooms. The first one held a decomposing corpse, a plague victim who decided to die peacefully at home in his own bed. The second bedroom was empty, and Graelen wrapped her up in the blankets, rubbing her arms and legs to warm them.

So intent was he on trying to save her, it took him a while to realize it was too late. She was already dead. The noise he heard must've been her last breaths.

He held her lifeless body, cleaning off her face with the sheet, and realized she wasn’t even a woman—she must've been fourteen or fifteen years old at most, maybe younger. All of a sudden he was back in the campground holding Chelsea, and he did what he wasn’t able to do there.

He buried his head in the girl’s stomach and wept, his hands stroking her forehead and the wisps of hair covering it.

It was several minutes before he pulled himself together. Graelen didn’t often get angry, but right now, it was the only thing keeping him from blowing his own brains out. He knew the odds of finding the men who did this were small, but at least it would give him something to focus on.

He looked out the front window, and caught movement and the sound of tires squealing to a stop. An electric blue pickup came to a halt a couple blocks away, and Graelen saw two figures hop in the back before it sped away. From his vantage point, he watched it head back and exit the housing area turning northeast.

He returned to the bed and stroked the girl’s hair one last time, tucking the blankets around her and giving her a fatherly kiss on the forehead. Rest peacefully, sweetheart. They’ll never hurt you again, he promised, and headed out the door.

Chapter 2: Avenging Angel

Graelen pulled the RV back on the road and headed after the other vehicle. With little to work with, he figured their most likely move would be to get back on the road and head out of town. He went ahead and got onto the freeway.

Probably best thing for him anyway—he'd head east on I-40, and if he didn’t run into his targets, at least that would put him on the coast. The weather should be pretty mild, and having his back to the ocean would be a decent tactical position. Plus, the plague didn’t appear to have affected the non-mammalian marine life, so there should be plenty of food.

Thirty miles down the road, he was surprised to see a blue pickup parked at a roadside rest stop. Graelen groaned in frustration and disappointment as he looked for the exit. The men he saw must've stopped and exchanged vehicles, which would make his job all but impossible.

He went ahead and pulled off the freeway. On the off chance they were there, and were watching the road, he’d almost certainly already been seen, but maybe they thought he was dead and they’d gotten away clean. He pulled the camper shy of where it might be seen under the bridge and geared up.

He hadn’t practiced with any of the three rifles he picked, but he’d had plenty of sniper training, and was fairly certain he'd be lethal with any one of them. He settled on the one with the best short distance scope—if the men were there, he'd be making shots from around two hundred and fifty yards. He slung it over his shoulder and stepped warily out the door. After checking to make sure no one was approaching from under the bridge, he crawled out over the highway and peered over the concrete guardrail.

At first, he saw no movement at all. Then someone stood up on the other side of a white sedan parked out front. The man walked unsteadily, a heavy can of gasoline in his right hand, a three-foot hose in his left. Two other men soon followed from behind the building, where there were several other abandoned vehicles. They stopped to siphon gas, and they hadn't seen Graelen.

He couldn’t believe his luck.

He checked his rifle and scope one last time. Hopefully they were properly calibrated. He considered firing into the gas tank. An explosion might take out all three at once, but unfortunately, this wasn’t the movies, and he couldn’t guarantee it would work. They might all three run away, and then he'd have to hit moving targets with an unfamiliar weapon.

Instead, he aimed at the chest of the one furthest away. The man didn’t appear to be wearing any armor, but at this caliber, it would've done him little good anyway. Graelen's first shot was perfect. The suspect never knew what hit him. The other two looked around in panic, the echo making it impossible to tell where the attack came from.

When Graelen went to discharge the casing, the rifle jammed. He cursed quietly to himself, and lay down on his back so the barrier hid him fully while he continued to try to free it. Someone failed to clean the rifle before putting it back in the police armory. He pulled out his pistols in case the other two were on their way to his hiding place, but in a few seconds, he heard tires pealing, and the blue pickup shot down the freeway.

He beat on the ground several times before he finally picked up all his weapons and headed back to the camper. Now they were aware someone was after them and he'd lost the element of surprise, not to mention that now he needed to pull off somewhere private and clean all his weapons. He made sure the pickup was completely out of sight before he pulled the RV onto a side road. He found an old machine shop and pulled the vehicle inside, rolling the heavy garage door down to fully hide it from view.

After cleaning his entire arsenal, Graelen looked around the shop, picking up tools he thought might come in handy. There was a tarp in the corner, and when he lifted it, he found a dirt bike underneath. It took a few tries with the kick start, but it finally roared to life.

Everything looked like it was in pretty good condition, and there were a couple empty bottles of stabilizer nearby, so Graelen hoped that meant the gasoline had a few more months of life in it. There was no room on the rack on the back of the motor home. Graelen brought the bike inside and parked it in front of the couch, along with a couple more cans of fuel stabilizer he found in a cabinet.

He stood to the side as he opened the shop doors, in case he’d been followed, but all was quiet outside. He drove the camper back onto the freeway. If he got another chance at those guys, he wouldn’t have the same problem.

Another ten miles down the road, he saw the pickup again at a diner. Graelen’s heart jumped at this opportunity. However, a quick recon revealed no movement at all. The guys had gotten smart and switched vehicles.

Graelen’s chances of finding them at all were pretty slim at this point. Even if he ran into two men together, he wouldn’t be able to identify them, especially if they changed clothes. He satisfied himself with the knowledge they wouldn't be able to identify him either, since they never saw his face or vehicle. He decided to stop in the next city for something to wear over the SWAT uniform.

Memphis was a pretty town, well-stocked with plenty of military and hunting supplies. Graelen found a gun range and practiced for hours with his new arsenal. He tossed several guns that didn’t hold up or have the accuracy he was looking for, and collected accessories and ammo for his favorites. The rifle he used at the rest stop ended up being a dud. It jammed up after five or six rounds, so it went in the trash pile.

Graelen replaced it with several .300 Win Mags with Nightforce scopes. He'd used them during his SEAL training, and after brushing up on his skills, he found they were still the best. He picked up suppressors and silencers, as well as laser sights for his pistols.

Satisfied he wouldn’t have any more weapons hiccups, he headed to a motocross store, looking for a storage container for his new bike. He was unsuccessful, but he was able to find a ballistic jersey and pants, which, combined with a second ballistic plate over his chest, would give him much more coverage. Plus, as a bonus, he would no longer have SWAT plastered across his chest.

Graelen filled his gas tanks as well, not liking the sluggishness of his engine when he turned it over. He added fuel stabilizer to the RV and the generators. He really needed to get wherever he was going. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to be mobile for long.

Maybe he should concentrate on finding a horse. He chuckled to himself. Heck, there might be a point at which he’d kill for a pack of dogs and a little red wagon.

In Nashville, the RV started hiccupping intermittently. Graelen wished he was any kind of mechanic. He was good with his hands, and built several houses working for his uncle during high school and during summers in college. He was great with framing, possessed a basic understanding of plumbing and electrical systems, and welding, but he had no experience with engines. A modern RV with a million electrical components which required computer diagnostics was not exactly the optimal vehicle for him to start with.

By Cookeville, the engine was choking so badly Graelen couldn’t take any more chances. He pulled over near a car dealership. He really wanted another RV, but had to admit it was unwieldy and terrible on gas.

He shot out a window on the dealership and grabbed a handful of keys. Two-thirds of the cars wouldn’t start. Those that did sounded terrible, and Graelen tried to estimate his chances of making it any significant distance. Central Tennessee wasn’t a terrible place to be, but he still thought he had a better shot of running into other people if he made it further east.

He found a large pickup truck that sounded better than the rest, and topped off its tank with treated fuel. That seemed to help it run smoother, and Graelen loaded all the gear he could hold into the bed and backseat.

When he got to Farragut, he decided to get off of the freeway and drive the back roads over the mountains toward North Carolina. He could hook up later with I-40 which would lead him to several interchanges, where he could decide what beach to head for. Getting off the main road might give him a better chance of coming across someone’s homestead or cabin in the woods. Clearly nobody'd chosen to settle right along the freeway.

His hopes of getting far dwindled twenty miles later, as his engine started hiccupping like the RV. He had to face it. This was as far as he was going for now. Graelen turned the wheel at the next side road and took it, assessing the suitability of the houses he passed. The ones he saw were too close together, too easily penetrated for his liking. As he drove, the houses started getting nicer and further apart. They disappeared altogether after a few miles, and Graelen thought about turning around, but he proceeded past one more bend, where the road came to a dead end, with one more possible driveway off to the left.

Calling it a driveway was being generous. It was really more of a double gravel path unused for months. He hopped out of the truck and closed the door quietly, put on a helmet, and armed himself. He hiked down the abandoned trail for a couple miles before he found what he was looking for. Tucked away in the trees, built so close to the hillside it was nearly part of the structure, was a small log cabin, very similar to the one his family used earlier.

His scope revealed no indication of recent use, so he decided to survey outside first. If he was going to be stuck here, he'd need water. There might be a million bottles in town, but with no way to haul it here after today, it was useless to him. There was a rainwater collection system hooked up to the house’s downspouts. What was inside the reservoirs was sludge at the moment, so that would need to be addressed.

He set a perimeter and looked around, and to his great relief, there was a running stream nearby. A hike less than a quarter mile upstream revealed it to be spring-fed, which meant for at least part of the year, he would be able to drink freely. Since this was the middle of summer, and theoretically the dry season, he hoped it would be available all the time. With two clean water sources, he felt more comfortable.

He followed the water downstream, where it emptied into a lake before branching off and continuing downhill in several streams over a spillway. The lake was manmade, and Graelen crossed his fingers as he looked into the water for signs of life. Right on cue, he heard a splash and turned in time to see a silver glint disappear back into the water, ripples emanating from where the fish jumped. He returned to the cabin, noting an abundance of berry bushes, still full of berries that were starting to get over-ripe. He pulled them off as he trekked back, their fresh sweetness a nice change from all of the canned chicken and veggies which had sustained him for the last three months.

So food and water weren’t going to be an immediate issue. He cautiously checked out the cabin. Unfortunately, the occupants chose to come here to live their last days—a man, two women, and two children. The smell was nearly gone now, but their decomposition had soaked into the surfaces and would require major scrubbing.

Graelen wrapped each of the bodies in a sheet and took them a ways from the house. There was no way to dig five deep graves amongst the tree roots, so he dug a wide, shallow one, and laid them all inside as respectfully as possible. He covered them with dirt, and arranged heavy rocks on top.

He brought his pickup in and parked it in front of the cabin next to the prior occupants’ much older model to unload his supplies. He hauled the motorcycle down and parked it inside the front door—no use in taking any chances someone might come along and swipe it. Thankfully, it was still working fine, probably filled with stabilized fuel from the beginning, so at least he wasn’t marooned out here completely yet.

He didn’t have much longer to haul things. He decided to make a run to the nearest town, where he loaded his dying truck with as much food as possible, as well as with large containers to haul water and store food. He picked up tools, seeds, and gardening equipment, hoping to find a sunny space to plant. The cabin’s location wouldn’t be conducive to gardening, but there might be someplace nearby that would work. Candles, lighters, scads of batteries