Part 3 – No Safe Haven

  As dawn's first light filtered through the camper's windows, Rob stirred from slumber, his body stiff from the cramped space and hastened hike the day before with his overloaded pack. He untangled his limbs and slowly snuck out the camper door. He dropped a rail-side propane stove from the camper and began brewing coffee, the rhythmic clinking of the pot a quiet soundtrack to the morning.

  Inside, Sarah was the first to wake up fully, running a hand through her tousled dark hair as she shivered in the crisp morning mountain air. She caught sight of Rob outside near the camp stove; behind him, the dense pines and the craggy scree ridgeline loomed over them.

  She crawled carefully over to the camper's door, stepping outside into the bite of the cold morning air, her breath clouding in front of her face. She joined Rob by the stove, drawn by the scent of the coffee.

  "Good morning," Rob said, his voice drowsy but warm. "Here you go,” he said, handing her a hot mug of coffee.

  Sarah wrapped her fingers around the mug with a grateful nod, the warmth of it seeping into her cold bones. "Thank you," she said gently.

  She took a tentative sip, savoring the rich flavor that slowly chased away the fog of sleep and fear. Her gaze drifted over the rugged landscape - the mist-shrouded treetops, the jagged crags jutting skyward, the untamed land that now felt like their only refuge. It was a stark contrast to the urban hell they had fled the day before.

  Turning back to Rob, Sarah's expression grew serious, her brow furrowing slightly.

  "What’s going to happen," she asked, her voice quieter now.

  Rob looked at her and then looked around. “I have no idea,” he said.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. “I’ve not had signal in weeks, but I noticed this yesterday,” he said, opening a map app. “The GPS location indicator is gone.”

  Sarah looked up from her mug. “Phone networks have been down for weeks, but I keep trying,” she said with a half-smile. “But the GPS thing, that doesn’t seem good.”

  “It feels like that list is starting to get long quickly,” he grinned weakly.

  Sarah looked around at the woods as the morning sun rays slanted through the hanging mist. “What's our situation, really,” she asked. “I mean, the three of us only had our go-bags. How long can we survive out here?"

  Rob took a long, slow measure of her words, then he looked at the camper truck. “I’ve been on a months-long sabbatical and I’ve got food for two more months, so we can stretch that,” he started. He looked at her. “Those go-bags say ‘ViralStrategies’ – big biotech conglomerate,” he said. “You all worked there?”

  She looked at him and exhaled in a sigh. “God, those bags are the epitome of ‘tone-deaf’ corporatism,” she said. “A Patagonia BlackHole 32L, and we were instructed to fill them with work crap - corporate secrets - and then personal effects, if they fit,” she glared, disgusted.

  He looked at her and she looked up. “I mean, I loved my job: Executive Assistant. My boss was border-line sociopath, but it was all logistics, and that’s my rabbit-hole,” she grinned with a tired smile.

  “What about Lisa and Maria,” he asked.

  Sarah sipped her coffee. “Lisa was in legal; she’d given her 1-month notice two weeks ago. And Maria – she was notorious in HR. She said they wanted to fire her. We really just met the day before yesterday,” she said vacantly, then she looked up at Rob.

  “This isn’t going to disappear, is it,” she asked.

  Rob's gaze drifted to a distant patch of meadow, mist rising through shafts of soft orange light. "When COVID hit, I thought, 'right, this will blow over in a month, two months tops’. But that thing brought the world to a halt."

  She looked at him and then looked around their little clearing. He looked at her and his eyes darkened. "I don’t know what’s going on out there, but the announcements have been calling this a virus,” he started, then looked away.

  “I mean, I heard those men rampaging yesterday; they were completely coherent. They were planning. They sounded mad, like they’d lost control, but they knew exactly what they were after,” he said.

  Sarah looked up at him. “Word around ViralStrategies was that this was a lab leak overseas.”

  Rob took a sip of his coffee and looked up at her. “Well, COVID19 shut the world down. This isn’t going to burn itself out,” he said. He didn’t finish the thought.

  She looked up at him. “What do you mean,” she asked.

  Rob exhaled deeply, his eyes searching hers. "I don’t know,” he stared, shaking his head. “Those vehicles yesterday, near the office building, FEMA, DHS, those were government agency vehicles. Emergency stuff,” he stated, glancing around.

  “If they got overrun and nobody came to back them up, then I don’t think anybody is going to come and save this day,” he said.

  Just then, movement from inside the camper drew their attention, and then Ranger and Shadow loped out and nuzzled into Rob and Sarah, then bolted off into the woods. Lisa emerged first, rubbing sleep from her eyes, followed by a more subdued Maria.

  Rob handed Lisa and Maria mugs of coffee as they emerge.

  Lisa accepted the mug with a grateful nod, managing a weak smile. “Thank you. You're a lifesaver.” She wrapped her hands around the warmth, taking a long sip before fixing Sarah with a curious look.

  Maria took her own mug mechanically, cradling it close to her chest like a shield. Her eyes were red-rimmed and haunted, staring into the distance, seemingly lost in her own dark thoughts. Birds chirped in the nearby trees, a jarring reminder of the normalcy that existed alongside the horror they were enduring. “Thanks,” she said weakly.

  Ranger and Shadow loped into the small little camp; their pack had increased significantly and they were ecstatic, but the cheer didn’t extend very far. The group huddled closer almost unconsciously, the warmth of the coffee mugs offering small comfort against the chill of the morning air. Sarah took a sip, her brow furrowed. Her mind, desperate for a spreadsheet, a plan, a list, scrabbled at the void. Inventory, routes, threats – they were all unknowns.

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  Maria had a blanket wrapped around her and she huddled with Lisa, who looked up. “There is nothing out here and we can’t stay,” she said.

  Sarah looked at Rob, but Rob just nodded. “You are right. There is nothing further on. The dirt track stops and the forest takes over,” he said.

  Maria looked up from her mug. “We can’t give up yet. I can’t just turn my back on humanity,” she said, looking at everyone. “This can’t be how it ends.”

  The group was quite in the cacophony of nature around them. Ranger and Shadow were chasing birds and the squirrels were calling out from the trees in protest.

  Lisa nodded toward Maria. “We were talking inside – maybe there is shelter or we could, um, you know, find a place that is safe,” she hoped. She shivered slightly, pulling the blanket tighter around herself as the wind nipped at their skin.

  Rob looked at all three of the women and nodded. “I think you both are right. We have to at least see what’s happening. If there is hope, then we have to give it a chance.”

  A moment later, a branch snapped in the trees. Rob's hand went to the shotgun, and Ranger and Shadow bolted toward the sound, barking. Rob stood, scanning the tree line.

  A figure stumbled into view—a man in a torn REI jacket, face gaunt, eyes wild. He saw them and froze.

  "Please," he rasped. "Water. I've been walking for…”

  Rob grabbed the shotgun and raised it. "Stop there."

  The man put his hands up. "I'm not sick. I swear. I'm just,”

  The women gathered behind Rob and Lisa stepped forward. "How do we know," Lisa demanded.

  The man's eyes darted between them. "I don't know. I don't know how you'd know. But I'm not - I'm not like them."

  Sarah stepped forward. "What's your name?"

  "Murphy. I worked at the hospital. Mercy General. It's gone. Everyone's…" His voice broke. "I've been walking for two days."

  Rob lowered the gun slightly. "You alone?"

  Murphy nodded. "My family was in the city. I couldn't.” He swallowed. "Can you spare water?"

  The group exchanged glances.

  Twenty minutes later, Rob and Sarah and Lisa and Maria were rumbling down the rocky track in the camper truck. They left Murphy with a canteen and two granola bars. He'd headed north, toward the deeper mountains.

  "We should've brought him with us," Maria said quietly.

  "We don't know him," Rob said. "We don't know if he's telling the truth."

  "We don't know anything," Sarah said. "But we're still here." Her eyes watched the rutted trail. “We’re still here.”

  Further down the mountain, the tires crunched over gravel, the hum of the engine the only sound besides their unspoken hope of finding stability.

  Sarah stared out the window, the mountains stretching before her—peaks and valleys and wilderness she’d overlooked throughout her life now shimmered with possibility. The road they were on represented the threshold between two worlds: the crumbling remnants of civilization and the untamed wilderness – the unknown.

  As they drove through the wilderness, sunlight flickered through the trees and the road curled like a ribbon along a mountain creek. When the wilderness finally gave way to the first scar of civilization - a shattered billboard, a burned cabin - Rob felt a cold, sinking weight in his gut. He wondered if the others felt it too: not homecoming, but a walk into a tomb.

  The camper truck rumbled onto one of the roads that snaked along the outskirts of a northern suburb of Calderna, and the four of them watched for threats and survivors.

  The truck ground low as Rob navigated a road littered with still smoldering husks of cars. The mist of late morning clung to the hills like breath on glass, softening the edges of a suburban landscape that no longer existed. They had avoided the main roads, weaving through utility tracks and forgotten trailheads, but now there was no way around the city. In order to make their way around the outskirts of the metropolitan area of Calderna, they’d have to pass through Calderna’s northern fringe—just below the commuter line, near the Eastport subway exchange.

  The truck crested a rise, revealing the skyline of Calderna sprawled five miles south—towering glass monoliths half-choked in smoke.

  Near the Eastport subway exchange, fog clung to the avenues. An overturned bus lay smashed into the concrete embankment. Dozens of wrecked vehicles clogged the intersections.

  Rob killed the engine. "Oh, shit. Look."

  Down below, at the subway entrance, a mob swarmed.

  A woman screamed—high, ragged, wet—as she was dragged by her hair toward the turnstiles. A teenager in a varsity jacket tried to intervene. The mob turned on him. He was down in seconds, stomped into the pavement with jubilant violence.

  Sarah couldn't look away. "Oh my God."

  Lisa gripped the dashboard. "We have to do something."

  "We can't," Rob said, voice taut. "If we get out here, we get swarmed."

  Then, from a derelict emergency vehicle, a loudspeaker crackled to life:

  "This is a federally issued Emergency Broadcast System update. Please remain calm. Order is being restored.

  The afflicted are not enemies. They are victims. Do not respond with violence."

  The message looped, surreal and hollow.

  Lisa turned toward the speaker, wide-eyed. "Are they insane? Look at them!"

  Rob clenched his jaw. "That's not a broadcast. It's just repeating. They're all dead."

  Lisa's voice was small. "Maybe it's just… this part of the city. The northern edge. Maybe further east—"

  "Maybe," Rob said. He didn't believe it. He fired up the engine and they stared off again.

  Sarah stared out the window. "We have to check. We have to know."

  Maria said nothing. She'd stopped crying. That was worse.

  They drove on, slipping eastward along a narrow side street, as the howling behind them merged with the hiss of static and the endless looped message promising that everything was going to be okay.

  Ten minutes later, another eruption of madness forced them to a halt.

  A mob of men and women chased a screaming couple down the center of the street. The man stumbled, his leg slashed open by a rusted axe, and collapsed in the gutter. Blood pooled beneath him.

  The woman turned back, reaching for him and screaming. "Simon! Get up! Please…"

  The mob closed in.

  "Jesus," Rob muttered, throwing the truck into park. He grabbed the Benelli M4 and stepped out.

  Sarah, Lisa, and Maria tumbled out behind him. "Rob, what are you…”

  He didn't answer. He raised the shotgun and fired into the air.

  "Get the fuck off her!"

  The mob froze. Twenty, maybe thirty people, their faces streaked with blood and something worse - joy. They turned toward Rob and the women.

  For a moment, no one moved.

  Then a man in a torn suit pointed at them. "Get them!" he shrieked, voice cracking with laughter.

  The mob surged forward.

  "Back in the truck!" Rob yelled, backpedaling.

  Sarah and Lisa and Maria scrambled toward the camper. The mob howled, closing the distance fast.

  Rob fired—center mass, no hesitation. A woman in a nurse's uniform dropped, chest blown open.

  "Rob, damn it!" Maria screamed from the open door.

  He hesitated. The couple - the man was still alive, crawling toward the curb, bloodied and broken. The woman was gone, swallowed by the mob.

  One more shot. A charging man's chest exploded. He fell.

  The remaining attackers kept coming.

  "Fuck," Rob spat, diving behind the wheel. The truck roared to life and peeled away, tires slipping in gravel and gore.

  Behind them, the mob chased for half a block, howling like animals, before dropping out of view.

  Rob pressed a hand to his forehead, jaw locked. "Goddamn it."

  Sarah curled into herself, arms wrapped around her knees. "We couldn't save them," she whispered. "We couldn't save anyone."

  Maria sobbed quietly, face turned to the window. Lisa stared blankly at the floor.

  No one spoke again for miles.

  Sarah stared at the passing trees, but she wasn't seeing them. The last file in her mind labeled "Contingency Plans - Society" closed itself. The cursor blinked one last time on an empty screen, then went dark. There were no authorities to call. No protocols to follow. The only plan was the man driving, the road ahead, and the grim arithmetic of the food in his truck. She had never felt so useless, or so clear.