Riposte (The Redivivus Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  Despite her adamant protests, the grotesque thing continued its slow, relentless advance. Ava shrunk deeper into the corner with each advancing step, as though propelled back by the magnetic force that exists between two identical poles. When her spine pressed against the wall and she could retreat no farther, she closed her eyes and prayed.

  Ava felt cold hands, viscid with coagulating blood, groping for her. Unbridled fear surged through her body as ropy fingers tightened around her throat. Struggling to pull oxygen through her constricting airway, the rancid smell assailing her was fouler than anything her young nose had previously experienced. With the wild-eyed confusion of someone being drowned, Ava lashed out blindly in a final desperate attempt to restore her ability to breathe. A halting thud reverberated through her arm, causing her to let go of the blade. The murderous grip around her throat loosened almost instantly. With great reluctance, Ava opened her eyes and saw the horror that used to be her mother’s face less than a foot in front of her. The menacing black knife handle protruded from her mother’s left eye socket, a near-translucent gel oozing from around the hilt.

  As though a switch had been thrown, the thing’s malicious movements ceased abruptly. Propelled only by its previous momentum and the force of gravity, it continued forward, slumping against Ava before falling to the floor in a lifeless heap. She felt its cold skin against her own as it slid to the ground.

  Ava stared wide-eyed, transfixed by the sight, and completely unsure of what to do next. The barrage of conflicting emotions surging through her mind did little to alleviate the paralysis she felt. When she finally came to her senses, she leaned forward and vomited.

  Part of Ava’s flummoxed mind wanted to go to her mother, to check on her. The other, more rational part reminded her that the thing on the floor—no longer her mother—had just tried to kill her. Eyeing the backdoor beyond her mother’s desecrated body, Ava saw her chance to escape from all she had seen and all she had been forced to do.

  * * *

  After running from her house for what seemed like days, Ava found herself in a stranger’s backyard with the infected all around. She saw several bad ones tearing into something, or more likely someone, but thankfully the surrounding shrubs largely obscured the gory details. As she crouched between two bushes, she was paralyzed by the gripping fear that she would be the next one lying there on the ground. Rooted to the spot, Ava could not avert her eyes from the horror before her. A gentle breeze wafted through the air like the wake turbulence from the wings of an angel, causing a branch of an elm tree to shift slightly above her head. The subtle movement caught her eye and drew her attention to the spot where a well-camouflaged tree house was inconspicuously nestled within the stalwart boughs of the enormous tree. Several weathered wooden slats nailed to the tree’s trunk slowly came into focus. Quickly and quietly, she scurried up the ladder, and into the relative safety of the child’s sanctuary.

  Not knowing what else to do, she remained hidden in the tree house for days, during which time she heard unspeakable things occurring in the world below. Snarling and screaming, growling and gunfire, fleeing and fighting—then…silence. For the most part, Ava spent her time in the tree house in a near catatonic state, so motionless one could have easily mistaken her for a statue were it not for the subtle rise and fall of her chest. She did not dare leave the safety of the tree house with all the bad things happening outside. When necessary, she relieved herself in the plastic sink of the long-forgotten play kitchen in the corner.

  It rained one night, and Ava awoke to find the pail sitting on the tree house deck full of runoff. Despite being sandy and tasting like rust and dirt, she drank the water greedily. Such was her thirst that she did not even stop drinking when her gaze settled on the dead fly floating in the brackish water.

  Faded drawings and crooked writings of former occupants decorated the inside of the drafty tree house. One evening, as she studied the walls that harkened back to brighter times long since past, Ava wondered what had become of the artist responsible for the myriad stick figures residing in the playhouse with her. Had she grown up and moved on? Or was she still a little girl, seeing the same horrors that I am, or worse? Ava was certain a girl made the drawings, and while she truly hoped she was older and far away from this place, Ava knew that did not necessarily mean she would be safe. When her searching gaze fell upon the name scrawled beneath the last figure, Ava broke down, the tears flowing down her cheeks like a busted water main.

  It read Mommy.

  Curled in a fetal position on the cold wooden floor, Ava cried, all the while fighting to keep from letting a single sound escape. She cried for her mother and for the child that had drawn the stick figures. She cried for the deliveryman and for all the horrors she had seen and heard in the world since fleeing her house several days ago. She cried for her father whom she had not seen in weeks. Oh, what I would give to see him now! He would take care of me! He would know what to do! Unfortunately, she had no idea where he was or if he was even alive. Lastly, she cried for herself, realizing with unfathomable despair that she would not likely live to see another sunset.

  As she lay coiled and sobbing, Ava recalled the last time she and her parents had been together as a family. They had gone out for dinner the night before her father left on his mission trip, and she ate until she thought she would explode. Even so, she still ordered her favorite for dessert—a chocolate milkshake. Sandwiched between her parents and holding each of their hands, they walked slowly to their car, in no hurry for their time together to end. As they neared their car, a destitute man asking for money with which to buy food approached them. Ava recalled that her mother’s initial reaction was to help the man, but her father seemed far more interested in getting his family into their vehicle and back home safely. John Wild was not a cruel man and was certainly not against charity; he merely sensed something was off in the vagrant’s eyes.

  No sooner than the family was secure in the vehicle, the disheveled beggar transformed into a wild animal as if a switch had flipped inside his brain. He began screaming obscenities and making lewd threats as he charged the car and banged on the windows.

  Taken aback, Rebecca stared at John with a frightened, dumbfounded expression; thankful he had resisted her plea to help the homeless and clearly unstable man. Staring at the deranged man in the rearview mirror, her father said, “A person with nothing left to lose is one of the most dangerous people in the world.”

  Ava certainly felt as though she had nothing left to lose; without warning, the plague had taken everything from her. Unfortunately, she felt anything but dangerous. Instead she felt alone, afraid, and uncertain of where to go or what to do next. At the time, Ava had been confused and disturbed by the man’s inhuman behavior. Now as she thought of the disturbed vagrant, she did not think he looked all that different from the bad ones. She couldn’t help but wonder if his feral aggression was somehow related to the atrocities currently devouring her world.

  As the dim light shone through the windows of the tree house, the branches cast foreboding shadows on the walls, making it feel as though a thousand dark arms reached in for her. Panicked, Ava tried desperately to melt into the floor of the wooden structure. Outside, low, moaning growls of the monsters lurking in the yard carried through the air. Other unsettling sounds admixed with their terrifying snarls—gluttonous, smacking noises, like when Billy, a ten-year old classmate with no table manners, chewed with his mouth open, as well as something akin to a serving spoon pulling free from sticky macaroni and cheese. In addition to scaring her immensely, the sounds made her realize just how hungry she was. A wave of nausea flooded her body as she envisioned the sanguinary deliveryman that marked the beginning of this nightmare for her. Ava remembered how badly she hoped it was the pizza man at the door that day. The pizza man never came, and she did not think she could ever eat pizza again anyway.

  What am I going to do? She was not even certain of where she was exactly. Relentless waves of despair roll
ed over her until sleep mercifully took her away. That night, Ava did not dream of the bad ones, the deliveryman, or her mother. Instead, her dreams drifted to the last time she had seen her father over two weeks ago. The night before he left they enjoyed a wonderful evening of talking, laughing, and playing together. Holding her arms, he spun her around and around until his face became blurry, as though an ever-thickening veil of fog settled over the once distinct features of his face. Similarly, his words grew increasingly faint with each revolution. Just when she was about to lose sight of him completely, she glanced down and noticed her arms stretching longer with each rotation. As she steadily slipped away, she heard him utter one final thing before vanishing into the mist completely.

  “Ava, sweetie, never give up and always be ready,” he said.

  Ava awoke with a start as his last word was spoken, as though it was an alarm clock from some other dimension. The bright morning sun scorching across her face seemed so incongruous with the dark events of the preceding night that she briefly wondered if everything, from the deliveryman on, had been a dream. The painful protests of her back as she sat up on the hard wooden floor made it abundantly clear that it was not a dream.

  Ava peered through the window of the tree house and was thankful when she saw none of the bad ones in the yard. As she glanced around, her eyes once again fell on the family of stick figures on the wall. Above them, scrawled in red by the hand of a child, were the words: ‘Never give up.’ Ava stared at the words in confusion, certain they had not been there the night before. Simultaneously, she felt a weight in her hand and noticed she clutched a broken red crayon. In that instant, a remarkable clarity swept over her, and she knew it was time to leave. If she was to survive, she was going to have to move fast and move often. She needed to stay smart and always be ready. She would never to give up.

  With the world outside the tree house still and quiet once again, Ava cautiously emerged from her hiding place. What she found made her shake her head and rub her eyes vigorously to ensure she was not dreaming. Everything in the world was different. More specifically, everything in the world was wrong. Cars were crashed or abandoned on every road. Dark smoke rose lazily from the earth before disappearing into the early morning sky as the last vestiges of countless conflagrations threatened to blink out. Worst of all, bodies of all shapes and sizes lay strewn about as if they merely stopped to take a nap right where they lay. Although Ava was only eleven, she was not naïve, and she knew all those people were not simply taking a nap. Tears welled in her emerald green eyes as she thought of her mother, Rebecca, lying motionless on the kitchen floor. If only mommy was just taking a nap!

  * * *

  Having been alone since fleeing her house nearly a month ago, Ava had begun talking to herself incessantly—sometimes in her head, but more often aloud. She found the lack of human interaction quite disconcerting, and her conversations proved to be profoundly comforting. During the previous month, the only other healthy person she encountered was a young man named Jim. It pained her deeply to think about him and his dreadful demise at the hands of the infected.

  Although Ava knew she should not talk to strangers, she made an exception when she met Jim. He was in his mid-thirties, and a good person. He, too, had been alone since the bad ones killed his girlfriend. Even though she spent only three days with him, he was always kind and did everything he could to ensure that she had everything she needed during their time together. If Ava were honest about it, in that short time Jim had been like the older brother she never had. Even in the end, the man she hardly knew gave his life for her so that she might escape and go on living. Wistfully, she recalled the last thing he said to her: “Stay safe and keep moving, Ava. Your dad is out there somewhere, and he will find you.”

  5

  October 3, 2015

  I-75

  Cobb County, GA

  After the brief respite during which they studied the map and planned their route, General Montes and his small group piled back into the truck. It seemed impossible that he and Corporal Rocha were the only two Brazilian soldiers left out of over fifty that had been aboard the KC-390. More unsettling was the fact that Sergeant Garza was the only American soldier they had seen alive out of hundreds stationed at the base. While it was possible that others survived, none of them held out much hope that was the case.

  Sergeant Garza informed General Montes that they were approximately twenty miles away from the CDC facility in Atlanta, travelling by interstate. Based on the reports and footage received by the base before communications went offline, he also informed the General that those twenty miles were likely to be a bumper-to-bumper, gridlocked snarl of traffic.

  “I heard one of the helicopter pilots from the base say most of the roads looked like rivers of parked cars,” Garza said. The comment made General Montes toy with the idea of commandeering a helicopter to allow them to bypass the parking lots the roads had become, but the thought of returning to the chaos of the airbase quickly put an end to that prospect.

  As they pulled back onto the road, the cool air rustled through Lin’s hair while the warm sun beat down upon her face. Closing her eyes, she felt herself being drawn ever so slowly toward sleep, and for a split second, the world around her seemed normal and familiar again. That sentiment was quickly snuffed out by the acrid smell of a nearby automobile fire left to burn itself out, reminding her the world was not the same place she had known only days ago.

  LNV carved a path straight through the heart and soul of humanity with such speed, and with such fury, that there had been precious little time to consider what it was or where it had come from. Before most government and health agencies ever acknowledged the severity of the situation, it was far too late. Such was the state of the world at the time of the outbreak. Too afraid of the political, social, and economic repercussions of any drastic action, no one was willing to step up and call the situation for what it was. In the short time between the emergence of the infection and its catastrophic sweep across the globe, all that could be heard from the government and scientific community was the same waffling gibberish spouted on the nightly news as it played on a loop. Given that the infection was all anyone spoke about at the time, it was truly remarkable to think about how little was actually said about it.

  “We live in an era of rampant mysophobia. Look at all the scare-mongering about the swine flu recently,” a scientist said on the day the media first reported the strange disease discovered in Brazil.

  1% of the world affected:

  “It’s certainly true that we’ve seen the emergence of more and more infectious diseases in recent years due to human expansion, climate change, antibiotic resistance, etc. But the reality is that most of these things garner a great deal of media hype then blow over just as quickly as they begin,” one politician said.

  7% of the world affected:

  “We need to approach this thing rationally and in a logical manner that is rooted in hard, scientifically-proven facts. We have established a task force to assess the true threat and will determine the best course of action to curtail its spread. Allowing panic and hype to take the wheel in regards to policy will have dire consequences,” a spokesman said.

  23% of the world affected:

  “We simply can’t justify shutting down all the ports and airports across the world. Think of the economy,” another official said.

  34% of the world affected:

  “I would like to address to the allegations that the response of this administration to the ongoing outbreak has been sluggish and inadequate. From the beginning of this horrific epidemic, we have continually warned of the impending disaster should a substantial worldwide effort not be implemented immediately. We have acknowledged the dire threat of this pathogen from the moment we learned of its existence and will continue to exploit all the resources of our great nation to protect the people from this diabolical disease,” the president of the United States of America said.

  42% of the world a
ffected:

  “The WHO is urging those in affected areas to remain calm, and to take the necessary precautions to protect themselves and their loved ones. Remain in your homes. Do not attempt to take those who fall ill to the hospital. Should a person in your family exhibit signs of infection, it is imperative that they are quarantined immediately. Any attempts to interact with or to assist an infected individual will only result in harm to yourself and further the spread of the pathogen,” a chief WHO spokesman said.

  56% of the world affected:

  Soon, all of the balderdash died off, replaced by the ceaseless static of unused airwaves and the useless loops of emergency broadcast messages. Whether this was due to the eventual acceptance that this plague was unlike any other previously faced by humankind, or simply because those tasked with damage control lost their soapbox when the television studios went dark, Lin did not know. One thing she felt certain about, however, was that the arrogance, cowardice, and solipsism of those in positions of power facilitated the demise of great numbers of the population at large. She was not so naïve as to assume they could have said or done anything that would have been able to put the ruthless virus back in its box. Still, Lin could not help but think that some attempt to warn the public about the danger they faced early on might have helped some people survive.

  As they drove, Lin muddled through what she had come to understand about the disease and its origin. She knew from experience that the best way to find a cure for any malady was to truly understand it on every possible level. Knowing what something needs to survive is the first step toward knowing what you need to do to kill it. Make yourself think like your enemy and you begin to see the holes in its armor. Only after she identified the virus’ Achilles’ heel could she find the kryptonite that would castrate it forever. The more she thought about it, the more she realized she wanted LNV to die even more than the thing that had killed her brother, Kang, so many years ago.