Prep For Doom Read online

  Phil slowly shook his head. “If you want to survive, you have to be willing to examine yourself. Deep down. You’ve got to be able to see what’s a hindrance and what’s a help.”

  “Like you know all about it,” he grumbled.

  “I do know. I’ve been surviving a bit longer than you. I’ve seen what’s out there. I know.”

  Luke picked up a rock and threw it angrily. How was he supposed to abandon everything he’d been taught to be true? “My father said killing was never the right way to solve anything.”

  “And I agree. But he had that shotgun hidden away for a reason, didn’t he? Just in case? When you’re looking down the barrel of a gun held by someone who won’t think twice about putting a bullet in your brain, what are you gonna do? Close your eyes and let him?”

  Luke didn’t reply. He didn’t want to think about it anymore.

  * * *

  One morning, Luke was feeding the chickens when he heard the crunch of gravel on the drive. He looked up just as Phil ran from the barn with Brewer following.

  “Get in the house,” Phil called. Luke whistled for Brewer. They sprinted inside, locking the door behind them.

  Luke drew the pistol holstered on his belt. Phil grabbed the shotgun by the door. Both peered through the window overlooking the porch. The curtains were drawn, but they could see through the narrow slits on each side.

  Around the bend, a red pickup approached.

  “Looks like we got company,” Phil said.

  Luke sucked in a breath as alarm pulsed through him. “That’s my dad’s truck.”

  Phil laid a hand on Luke’s arm. “Hold on.” He leaned closer, squinting. “That your dad behind the wheel?”

  Luke waited as the truck slowly drew closer. “No. Looks like a man and a woman. I don’t recognize them.”

  Luke tried not to think about the implications of someone else having his father’s truck. That meant…so many things, none of them good.

  The driver’s door opened and a man climbed out. Tall and thin with curly brown hair, he looked like a teenager. Slowly raising his hands, he edged around to the passenger side and opened the door for the woman. She stepped out and stood beside him, swaying slightly, as if she could hardly stand up. He said something to her and she lifted one hand. Her other arm remained wrapped tightly around the man’s waist for support.

  Slowly, cautiously, the two of them approached the house.

  Phil glanced at Luke and said, “I’m going out the back. Keep your eyes open. Look for anything that seems off, got it?”

  Luke nodded. He hoped Phil didn’t see his hands shaking.

  When the couple reached the porch steps, they stopped. He could hear them talking in low voices, and he strained to listen.

  “We can’t do this,” the girl said. “It’s not right.”

  “We have to. You know we do,” the man replied. “It’s us or him.”

  “There’s got to be another way,” she said.

  “I don’t want to die. Do you?”

  Luke decided they’d come close enough. “Best thing you can do is turn around and leave,” he called out.

  They both jumped, startled by his voice. The man reached into his back pocket. Luke raised his pistol. He’d have to shoot through the glass, but the man was close enough to hit. He was puzzled when the man held up a piece of paper. He couldn’t make it out, but it looked like a photo.

  “Luke Tomlin?” the man said.

  His heart raced. How did this guy know his name?

  “I know you don’t know me. We met your father—Jason, right? We met him at the hospital. He asked us to find you…gave us your address. And a picture of you…your family.” The man leaned forward, extending his arm out to show the picture. Luke could see it now. It was the one taken last year on Easter. His dad had carried a copy in his wallet.

  Luke tried to calm his breathing. He had to reason this out, but his head was filled with panicked thoughts. Finally, he said, “Is he dead?”

  The man’s head dropped a little, and he lowered his arm. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

  “How do I know you’re telling the truth? You could have taken the picture from his wallet. You stole his truck, didn’t you?”

  “No…we…” The man shook his head, and the girl gave him an anxious, pleading look. “He gave us his truck. He was worried about you, and he wanted us to find you. He said if we found you alive, to give you a message. He said to tell you, ‘keep on living, Super Boy.’”

  Luke swallowed hard. Super Boy—only his father would have known that. Could they be telling the truth?

  Something still didn’t feel right. “What do you want?” Luke asked.

  The man glanced around nervously, then stared at the girl, whose face grew pale. His gaze settled on the window, as if trying to figure out Luke’s location behind the curtain.

  “We want…” he began, then he looked at the girl again. “We want you to get down. There’s a man…” He grabbed the girl and pulled her to the ground.

  The glass shattered next to Luke’s face. He fell back, breathing hard. Pain pierced his face. He touched his cheek. Blood coursed down from the shards embedded in his skin. Someone had tried to shoot him. Who? He carefully crept to the corner of the window and peered out. The two were still on the ground, the man shielding the woman with his body. Luke scanned the area, looking for movement in the trees, but saw nothing.

  More shots rang out from behind the house. He spotted Phil darting from tree to tree. Did he see the shooter? Then Luke spotted movement in the woods on the left side of the house. A man sprinted through the trees, heading around the back. From Luke’s vantage, he could see that Phil had lost sight of him. That meant the man would be coming around behind Phil, and Phil wouldn’t know.

  Wincing at the needles of pain in his cheek, he scrambled to his feet and ran to the back door. He got there just as the man darted past the house. Luke slipped out the door and followed, his heart pounding and every nerve on alert. The man wasn’t aware of his presence; he’d found his target and was fully focused on Phil hidden behind a tree, his gun aimed in the wrong direction.

  The man raised his weapon, Phil in his sights.

  “Hey!” Luke yelled.

  The man swung around, startled, and fired. The bullet whizzed past Luke’s ear.

  Luke returned fire.

  The man jerked as a red stain blossomed on his chest. He crumpled to the ground. Phil ran toward him. Everything that happened next blurred together. Phil knelt next to the man on the ground, then moved to Luke, asking if he was okay. Luke felt sick. He wanted to cry but knew he couldn’t; he had to be strong; he had to be brave. He’d just killed a man. He’d just killed a living human being. How was he ever going to be the same again?

  He fell to his knees. His stomach heaved, and he vomited.

  “It’s okay,” Phil whispered. “You saved my life.”

  Luke wiped his mouth on his shirt with shaking hands and took in deep breaths. Hot and cold currents passed through him as he tried to gain control. “Is he dead?”

  “Yeah.”

  From around the corner of the house, the couple approached cautiously. Phil raised his weapon. “No further,” he said.

  They stopped. “We’re so sorry,” the man said to Phil. “We had no choice. He forced us to do this.” They both looked over at the man crumpled on the ground.

  “Do what?” Phil asked.

  “To make you think we needed help. So you’d let your guard down. He’s been following you.”

  Phil’s expression turned dark. “Damn.”

  * * *

  His name was Sam and hers was Lindy. They met at the hospital. Lindy had come down with the virus but had recovered. She was still pale and weak, her eyes still slightly bloodshot.

  “I took my mom to the hospital,” Sam said. “She died that night. They put the whole place under quarantine and I was stuck there. I kept waiting to get sick, but I never did. Everybody was dropping like flies,
and pretty soon hardly anyone was left alive. I found Lindy; she’d been there about two weeks. It was a miracle she recovered.”

  “How did you find my dad?” Luke asked.

  “We were on our way out,” Sam said, his face grim. “We’d decided to just head in a random direction and try to find someplace safe. Your dad was sitting on the floor in the hallway, leaning against the wall. At first we thought he was dead. But he reached for us, asked us to wait. He told us about you, how worried he was. Said he’d give us his truck if we’d go find you and make sure you were safe.”

  Luke’s chest tightened as he pictured his father dying. “You could have just taken off with the truck. Why didn’t you?”

  Sam stared at his feet. “I wanted to. But Lindy wouldn’t let me. Even though your dad would never have known, Lindy said she believed in keeping promises.” He glanced at her and she smiled.

  “I wanted him to have hope,” Lindy said. “I wanted him to know somebody would find you.”

  “We found a map, figured out where you lived, and took off,” Sam said. “Every town we drove through was a ghost town. No signs of life. Only bodies everywhere.”

  “Then we got to Anchorton. A man flagged us down,” Lindy said. “We were so shocked to see someone alive, we stopped. He seemed so happy to see us. And he seemed nice. A regular guy, you know?”

  “Yeah, we were stupid,” Sam added.

  Phil shook his head as if he understood. “You can’t trust anybody anymore. So what happened?”

  “We chatted about our situations. He said he was from New York City, had lost everyone, and was hoping to find his friend.” Sam’s brow drew tight as he spoke. “We told him about trying to find you, Luke. We showed him the picture your dad had given us.”

  “That’s when everything changed,” Lindy said. “When he looked at that picture, we could tell he recognized your face.”

  Luke’s pulse charged. “How?”

  “He’d been following Phil,” Sam said. “He’d seen you two in Anchorton, collecting supplies, and connected the dots. He pulled a gun on us and told us to do what he said or he’d kill us both. He forced us to drive him to your house. Since you were together, he believed he’d find Phil here too.”

  Luke stared at Phil. “You knew him?”

  “Yeah, I knew him,” Phil said quietly. “His name’s Alfred Beeston. I figured out he was following me somewhere around Albany. I thought I’d lost him.”

  A dozen questions filled Luke’s mind, but Phil had turned moody and withdrawn. Luke knew better than to press for answers.

  “We’re real sorry all this happened,” Sam said. “If you want us to go, we will. We’ll even leave the truck. We kept our promise to your dad, just not the way we planned.”

  “No kidding,” Luke said. He touched his cheek again, pulling out a sliver of glass. He glanced at Phil and found him staring back. He knew Phil was waiting for him to give Sam and Lindy an answer. Did he want them to go? He wasn’t sure, but reason said they could be of use, and there was strength in numbers.

  “You can stay,” Luke told them. They both grinned.

  “Thanks, man,” Sam said. “We’ll work hard. You won’t regret it.”

  Phil decided they should burn Alfred’s body before they buried it, so there’d be no chance of someone recognizing him, even if they dug him up. Luke and Sam helped load the man on the bed of the truck along with a jug of gasoline, and Phil took off on his own to the back pasture, insisting he’d do the job.

  In the days that followed, the four of them fell into a routine. They tended the garden, cared for the chickens, gathered eggs, completed necessary maintenance on the house, barn, and coop, and cooked and cleaned. Twice they made trips into Anchorton. With the pickup truck, they were able to load up with enough supplies to keep them going for a long time. They cleaned out Carlton’s Gun and Tackle of all their weapons and ammunition. Phil remarked how fortunate they were that Anchorton was far enough off the beaten path that it hadn’t been ransacked much by looters. It was a good thing too, because he expected it would only be a matter of time before they started seeing more people showing up in town and at the farm. Not all of them would be friendly. Every day Phil drilled them in the use of weapons. They practiced until they grew confident in their ability to handle a gun and shoot accurately.

  Each night they listened to the radio, hoping for some sort of news. Finally they caught a faint, broken message discussing the potential for survivors in Staten Island.

  “Beeston mentioned that place once,” Lindy said. She glanced at Sam. “Remember? Maybe we should go there.”

  Sam nodded. “Yeah. He said something about maybe all of us heading there after he found his friend. That was when we first met him. So it’s a real thing.”

  “You don’t want to go to Staten Island,” Phil said.

  “Why not?” Sam asked. “Maybe it’s a new start.”

  Phil rubbed a hand over his face. “Let me tell you something,” he said. “Eight years ago, I worked for a government agency that monitored radical groups. We had our eye on a pharmaceutical corporation called Peter Franklin Donalds. We'd followed leads before that took us nowhere, but we ended up hearing talk of a genetically modified virus, similar to Ebola. They were creating a bioweapon.”

  “That’s what this is?” Luke said. “That’s where it came from?”

  “I’m pretty sure,” Phil replied. “I’d been working for the agency about four years when my wife got cancer. I took early retirement so I could be with her. Right before she died, I got word that PFD had identified us, our little watch group. We had names, see, and now they had ours. About that same time, we discovered that certain members of the government were actually encouraging PFD’s work. This was all before the outbreak. At the time, I didn’t know what PFD was trying to do.”

  “So that man, Beeston—” Luke started.

  “Yeah, I’m getting to that. After my wife died, I worked odd jobs here and there. I found out that several members of our group had turned up missing. I didn’t know how many, or who was left. Then came the outbreak, and it all hit the fan. I decided to get out of town while I had the chance. Chaos makes for a good cover sometimes. I knew who Alfred Beeston was. Never met him, but I knew he was bad news. What I didn’t count on was that he’d be coming after me. I figured he was dead like most of the population.”

  Luke, Sam, and Lindy stared at each other, unbelieving. “So was it the government or PFD looking for you?” Sam asked.

  “Don't know, but if PFD really is responsible for this outbreak, it sure makes sense they'd want to eliminate everyone who knew about it. Or, for all I know, maybe Beeston was working on his own. Maybe everyone is gone, and he just wanted to finish what he started.”

  Lindy shook her head. “But you were retired.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I knew things. Know things. Which is why I don’t think you should go to Staten Island. PFD is running the place. I don’t think it’s what they’re saying it is.”

  * * *

  A few days later, Luke heard the approach of a vehicle up the drive. He yelled a warning and everyone grabbed their weapons and scrambled quickly to their positions. A black van drove slowly around the bend and stopped well back from the house. Two men got out, both dressed in casual clothes—jeans and shirts.

  But what caught Luke’s attention was the logo on the side of the vehicle: a gray diamond overlaid with the letters PFD. He turned to Phil and said, “You need to hide.”

  Phil took it calmly. “I won’t hide,” he said. “If they’ve come for me, I’ll try to stay out of sight. But I’ll fight if that’s what it comes to.”

  Luke nodded and took a deep breath. He slowly opened the door and stepped out onto the porch, his pistol trained on the two. “This is private property,” he said with as much bravado as he could muster. “You can turn around and leave.”

  One of the men held up his hands in a placating gesture. “We don’t want trouble. We’re just looking fo
r information. We’re trying to find a man. Black man. Tall, about fifty. Seen anyone like that?”

  “Nope. He’s probably dead like everybody else.”

  “We have reason to believe he’s not. He’s been recently spotted in this area.” The man waited for a response. Luke didn’t give it.

  “You live here alone?” the man asked.

  Luke remained silent. He fired a warning shot at the man’s feet. An explosion of dust forced the man to jump back. The second man drew his gun. Luke sent a bullet into his shoulder. The man cried out as his weapon catapulted from his hand.

  “I answered your question,” Luke said firmly. “Now, turn around and leave.”

  “I think you need to know what you’re up against,” said the first man, backing up. “This guy is dangerous.”

  “That’s good to know,” Luke said. “If I ever come across his corpse, I’ll keep it in mind.” He took one step off the porch and aimed for the man’s leg. Before he could pull the trigger, both turned and ran for the car. The van circled sharply around, spitting gravel, and sped off in a cloud of dust.

  Once they were out of sight, Luke retreated inside and locked the door. He could hardly catch his breath. “They might be hanging around, Phil. Maybe they’re waiting for a chance to catch us off guard.”

  “I don’t think so,” Phil replied as he stared out the window. “But we’ll soon know.”

  “How did they know to come here?” Lindy asked.

  “They’re probably checking all the remote residences,” said Sam.

  “Or Alfred tipped them off,” Phil added, his voice grim.

  They decided to take shifts and keep watch throughout the night. By early morning, there was no sign of their return. Luke climbed into bed, exhausted. But sleep remained elusive. Once again his thoughts returned to his father, a body left in a hospital hallway. It wasn’t right.

  Brewer jumped on his bed and curled up beside him, as if he sensed Luke’s distress. He nudged into Luke’s hand with a whine and waited for Luke to give him a comforting rub behind the ears. The warmth of the dog’s body eased the ache from Luke’s mind, and he slipped into a restless sleep.