Love at the End of the World Read online

  Slowing down, she pulled onto a dirt road that crossed through the divider, no doubt used back in the day for cops to hide and catch speeders, and backed up into the rural setting. Knowing they were shielded from any oncoming vehicles, she shut down the engine.

  Rising, she left the driver’s seat, stretched, and headed into the back. Luke sat passed out in the chair, but she saw his chest move up and down and knew he still lived. Casey had turned the table area into a bed, so Jo headed into the back bedroom. Yawning, she pulled her gun from its ankle holster, made sure the safety was on, and placed it on the nightstand. Toeing off each shoe, she lay on top of the comforter and closed her eyes. It didn’t take long for her to succumb to sleep.

  * * * *

  The gentle rocking of the camper moving dragged Jo from sleep. She opened her eyes, a little disoriented, until the memories from the night before flooded her brain. Sitting up, she looked out of the open door and saw Casey at the small dinette table, turned back into an eating place, and the teenager waved at her. Jo acknowledged her with a nod, then she rose and headed to the toilet to relieve herself.

  The mirror in the tiny cubicle revealed a face that looked tired. Dark circles encased her brown eyes, and the past year had made her skin pale and a little sallow. A vacation would be nice, but who the hell took a week off to lay on the beach when the world was in complete disarray? Pushing aside the irritation that she looked all of her forty years, Jo washed her face to help wake herself up. As she stepped back into the living quarters of the camper, Casey held up a box of cereal.

  “This is about all we have,” the girl said. “We’re low on supplies.”

  Jo took the box and stuck her hand inside, taking out a handful of corn flakes to munch on them as she nodded toward the man driving.

  “How’s he doing?”

  “I’m making him take the penicillin,” Casey said. “He wouldn’t take the pain pills. Said he had to keep his wits.”

  “So he’s a masochist. Good to know. Did you check his bandage this morning?”

  “I changed it.”

  “Good girl.”

  Casey smiled widely.

  Jo handed the cereal box back to her, winked, and made her way to the passenger seat. She sat down and ate the last of her so-called breakfast, half-turning in her seat to study him.

  “How’re you feeling?”

  “My side fucking hurts,” Luke replied.

  “Well, that’s the unfortunate side effect of being shot and not taking pain pills. You could, I don’t know…pull over, let me drive, while you chill out in the back?”

  “I’m not exactly straining myself sitting here,” he said. “Hell, I’m not even stressed, because I don’t have to constantly be on the lookout for speed traps.”

  “Not quite the same as propping your feet up and resting,” she replied. “How many times have you been shot?”

  He pointed first to his front side. “One,” he said, then pointed toward his back. “Two. I bet two times more than you.”

  “That would be a yes, but I’ve patched up ten times more bullet holes than what you currently have, so I win on experience. Believe me, you do not want to pop your stitches.”

  “Scout’s honor, all I’ll do is sit here and look pretty.”

  A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

  “I’m going to go out on a limb,” he said, “and guess you were in the medical field before this shit storm happened.”

  “Little bird tell you that?”

  “Well, either that or you were a seamstress. It was a toss-up.”

  “Not a seamstress,” she said. “I was an ER nurse, but you have one on me because I have no clue what you could’ve done before the apocalypse.”

  “No? Am I that hard to read?”

  She narrowed her gaze as she assessed his body. “Stripper?”

  He chuckled and then gasped, pressing a hand to his side. “It hurts to laugh.”

  “I was being serious.”

  “Thanks, I think, but no. No Magic Mike am I. Mechanic, pure blue collar.”

  “If you say so,” she replied. “But I think you missed your calling.”

  A tinge of red dusted over his cheekbones. He cleared his throat. “So how did you know there’d be a ladder in that bathroom?”

  “Because I put it there,” she replied. “When you’re thrust into a situation you can’t control, it’s best to find all the variables that can even out the playing field.”

  “Sounds like you’ve been in that kind of situation before.”

  She shrugged. “I was a foster kid. Self-preservation is the first thing you learn in the system. I had been at that haven point for a few weeks, hunting and pecking through what was left of Helena, and I made sure to have a Plan B, because you just never know.”

  Luke was quiet for a few minutes, until he uttered a soft, “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For Plan B. For taking care of my daughter. I left her alone because I thought she needed to blow off some steam.”

  Jo decided not to rub his bad judgment in his face. In the old world, maybe Luke’s action would be a good thing, letting a teenager have some space to deal with emotional issues, but in this world, everything had changed.

  “You’re allowing me to tag along, so I guess we’re even,” she said nonchalantly.

  “Hardly.” He sighed. “You saved her. You saved me. Hell, you must be our guardian angel.”

  She snorted inelegantly. “I’m hardly angelic.”

  “Do you think anyone else would’ve gone after Casey and then defended her by putting herself between my bat and her body?”

  “I think my gun would’ve taken you.”

  “Not my point,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she replied softly. “I know. You didn’t hear what those assholes wanted to do with her. I did, and believe me, even if you weren’t her father, you would’ve done the same. Growing up in the system, I’ve been in situations where I wish someone had rescued me.”

  Luke sighed. “This is such a fucked-up world.”

  “Yeah, well, it was kinda fucked-up to begin with.”

  He made a noncommittal grunt that she took as an agreement.

  “Do you mind me asking what happened to Casey’s mom?”

  He glanced in the rearview mirror, looking to see where his daughter was before answering, pitching his voice low. “She was one of the early victims. Although we’d been divorced for several years, it was still a hard blow when she passed. Especially for Casey.”

  “Yikes. Dealing with that amongst raging hormonal development during the apocalypse has to be hard.”

  “Yeah. Being a parent, you do everything you can to give your kid a happy, well-adjusted life. Teaching respect and values, making sure she says thank you and please. Telling her all the lies boys will say and hoping none of the little jerks will break her heart. Stepping back to give her room to grow and discover who she really is. But how do I protect her from a virus that seems to attack indiscriminately? Every day I wake up fearful I’m going to see blood pouring out of her ears or her nose. And then I worry about what will happen to her if I’m the one who becomes ill.”

  Jo didn’t say anything, because she didn’t know what to say to make him feel better. She’d never been a mom or had anyone depend on her. Hell, she’d never even had a pet. What advice could she possibly give him that wouldn’t sound condescending?

  He sighed. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to dump.”

  “It’s all right. I bet you’ve had all that bottled up for a while.”

  “Yeah. I have yet to meet a psychologist in this new world.”

  “He or she would probably still bill you per hour as you lie on a couch and talk about the length of a cigar.”

  He smiled, showing white teeth. “Probably.”

  “So where are you from, Luke?”

  “Casey and I lived in a small town in Texas, so for a large portion of time we were slightly isolated from the chao
s going on in the rest of the country. And in the world really. Then, little by little, I saw everything imploding, and I knew it was only a matter of time before all the shit hit the fan where we were, so I packed us up and started driving north. Figured Canada might be a nicer place. Stopped here for some supplies and the rest…” He trailed off because she knew the rest.

  Jo studied Luke’s profile, admiring his rugged, good looks. He wasn’t classically handsome, but there was a strength emanating from his chiseled jaw and built shoulders that told a story. The type of man who balanced many responsibilities and would keep a cool head in a fight-or-flight situation. Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to have someone who would watch her back when the need arose.

  “You know, I always thought it would be zombies that got us in the end,” he said.

  “Or aliens.”

  He looked at her, and their gazes met for a moment, then Luke chuckled. The husky timbre to his voice sent a jolt of awareness through her body, reminding her how long it had been since she had found a man appealing.

  “Yeah,” he said with humor. “Aliens. Jesus, I wish it was aliens. So where are you from?”

  “Atlanta.”

  “Big-city girl.”

  “I wasn’t attached to the place or anything,” she admitted. “I just never found a reason to leave, until I thought it best to move to a less populated area.”

  “Where are you headed?”

  She leaned her head back on the rest and stared out the front windshield. “I heard about a community made up only of women, somewhere on the western side of Canada.”

  “No men?”

  She shook her head. “It’s a place, supposedly, where women don’t have to live in fear of being taken and abused by men. Since I was a nurse I’m hoping they have need of me.”

  “But you don’t know where this place is?”

  “No.”

  “So how do you know it’s real?”

  “I don’t,” she admitted.

  “Then why go?”

  “Because there’s got to be something better than all this. When the virus first hit, everyone thought it was like the flu or something. It’d run its course and be done…but it mutated, again and again, until we didn’t even know how to treat the symptoms. Blood pouring from every orifice—you can’t even imagine the sight.”

  “Why did some people get sick and some didn’t?” he asked.

  “The simplified version is that there’s a protein that is present on the surface of some blood that makes it positive. No protein means the blood is negative. It’s called the Rhesus factor. Somehow this virus attacked that protein, destroying the blood cell, which is what caused the massive hemorrhaging.”

  “So…all the people who had positive blood died?”

  “That seems to be the case,” she replied. “As for the who, what, why…I have no idea. I’m not a virologist, so I can only assume that the virus died because it ran out of the protein to consume.”

  “I know that I’m a universal donor,” he said. “The Red Cross was always trying to get me to donate.”

  “That means you’re O-negative. When you got into the Helena haven point the guards pricked your finger. They checked your blood type right there.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, thinking over what she said. Then he asked, “So just how many people are we talking about?”

  “How many...”

  “People who had this Rhesus factor. What kind of numbers were affected?”

  “Eighty-five percent of the world’s population.”

  “Jesus,” he muttered. “So do you think the rest of the world is like us? Trying to pick up the pieces?”

  “Disease is only a plane ride away,” she answered softly. “When we lost communication with other countries that’s when I knew it was time to leave the city. Gangs rose up and people began looting, so I knew it was only a matter of time before all hope was lost.”

  “So where do we go from here?”

  Jo looked out the side window, seeing the beautiful landscape and the big, fluffy clouds dotting the blue sky. “We ride this out, I guess. Find a place to hunker down, survive until civilization can be rebuilt. That’s why I’m trying to find this community.”

  “You think you can be happy there?”

  She turned back to look at him, and their gazes locked for a second before he had to look back to the road, but in that moment, the idea that she could stay with him and Casey popped into her head. His question certainly held a deeper meaning.

  “I don’t know.”

  She didn’t know how to answer him, and he didn’t press her further. Suddenly, she was confused when she should have been resolute. This was a man she didn’t know, and if there was one thing her past had taught her, people with good intentions rarely lived up to them and trust was a dirty, five-letter word. It was best to stick with her original plan, although she didn’t see the harm in traveling with Luke for a bit. He was recovering from a wound, so if he tried anything funny, she was confident she could overtake him.

  Once again she was on the move, and like so many times in her tumultuous past, she was traveling into an unknown future. That mantra seemed to be the motto of her life. As she thought about the choices that had led her to traveling in the camper with this man and his kid she thought she saw a metallic glint reflecting in the side mirror. She sat up and looked again, but decided she must have been seeing things, because after a minute or two she didn’t see anyone following them. It seemed very unlikely the guards from the haven point in Helena would leave the compound to hunt them down.

  A green sign announcing how far to the next town came zipping by, and Luke pointed at it. “Wanna stop there? I can siphon some gas, and maybe we can pick up some supplies.”

  “Yeah, okay,” she replied. “If there’s a medical care facility, maybe I can restock my med kit.”

  Luke flipped on the right turn signal and then flipped it off almost immediately. “I keep forgetting I don’t need to signal anymore.”

  That amused her. Perhaps it was the little things that would make surviving in the apocalypse bearable.

  Chapter 4

  The country town of Greenway, Idaho lay picturesquely nestled amongst the tall trees and rolling hillside, aptly named for the deep, rich color all around. Luke drove the camper down the main street and pulled into a long-deserted gas station. A dozen or so cars were parked, as if the owners had popped into the small store and would be out at any minute.

  Jo opened her door and hopped out, stretching as she looked up and down the street. A few windows had been busted out, but most were intact with boards over the entrances. She saw a sign for a medical clinic and grabbed her backpack.

  “I’m going to that clinic,” she said, pointing to the sign. “Hopefully there’ll be some medical supplies still remaining.”

  “Want me to go along?” Luke asked. He had a hand pressed to his wounded side.

  “No,” she said. “I want you to take it easy so you don’t reopen those bullet holes.”

  “Scout’s honor, I promise to only siphon gas.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “And don’t drink it.”

  “I’ve been doing this about a year now,” he replied dryly. “I’m a pro. In fact, I think I’ll call myself an expert at sucking up gas through a hose.”

  “I don’t think that’s something to be proud of.”

  He grinned. Jo rolled her eyes and began walking in the direction the sign pointed toward. The only sounds were the birds chirping through the trees. A warm breeze moved the hair on her forehead. All in all, it was a picture-perfect day, until she turned a corner and a foul-smelling stench cut through the idyllic scenery. She came to a halt. She knew that smell. The decay of death was unmistakable.

  A brick building sat at the end of the street, with a pristine sign proclaiming it was the one she sought, but she really didn’t want to go inside. For a few minutes she debated what to do—go inside to get whatever medical s
upplies could be left, or leave the dead in peace. It eventually came down to the fact that she was there, now, and the possibility that medical supplies could be so close sealed her decision. With a sigh, she took off her backpack to find a bandana. She wrapped it around her mouth, doing a bad impersonation of a bank robber, before trudging forward.

  The door was unlocked, and as she stepped inside a horribly gruesome scene greeted her. The waiting room was full of corpses with a spattering of blood speckling the walls, ceiling, and floor. The bright red had faded to a dark rust color, dimming down the horrific fate of the patients, but Jo knew what it was. Ten people had expired right there in their seats, waiting for the doctor or nurse to come out, possibly filled with hope that medicine would cure them. The virus had been airborne, the onset signaled when blood began pouring from an orifice, the nose being the usual route. But once the blood began to flow, there wasn’t any hope left. Death followed soon after.

  Memories of her boss, Heather, popped into her head. Her death had been particularly hard to accept because they’d been friends as well as colleagues. Swallowing down the sadness, Jo left the waiting room to head through the clinic doors.

  Three triage rooms lay on the right with a mini-lab and x-ray room on the left. She peaked into each room, seeing the same horrible sight over and over. A corpse on the bed with another corpse on a gurney, sharing room privilege. Jo considered herself fairly tough, definitely strong, but seeing the body of a dead child, slowly rotting away, brought tears to her eyes. She pressed a hand to her mouth and turned, backing out of the room until the wall stopped her. Not much was fair in life, even less so when the plague had hit, but children always broke her heart.

  Jo took a deep breath and wiped the wetness from her eyes before squaring her shoulders. Get in and get out. She started at the nurses’ station, and her search yielded a bottle of acetaminophen and some cold medicine stashed in a drawer. A set of keys caught her attention with one of them labeled storage. Grabbing them, she went on a hunt for the door and found it in the back of the clinic.