Chapter 1

A dog barked somewhere in the distance, and I looked up from my impromptu workbench to scan the area. My propane-powered delivery truck used a special connector to refuel, and I was building an adapter to fuel from portable propane tanks. There was no Internet, so I was working from my own knowledge, along with a bit of trial and error.

Propane was both readily available, and it did not deteriorate with time, so it fit my needs. As long as my truck remained mechanically sound, I could drive it wherever I wanted to go. The next question was, where would I want to go?

I sat down on the pickup tailgate that I was using as a workbench, and looked up at the sky. It had rained the night before, and low clouds moved on a light breeze from the southeast. It was a typical spring day in Houston, much like many others I’d experienced.

At first glance, the subdivision around me looked normal, too. A closer look, though, revealed some. The lawns were uncut, the grass standing nearly knee high in places; garage doors and house doors stood open, and I was the only person left alive in the community.

It had been two weeks since I’d seen another living person, a young woman lying in a home two blocks from where I sat. She’d died the morning after I found her, and her body was completely gone by the following day. She had taken a little of the water I’d offered, but she was beyond any help. All that remained was her clothing and two handfuls of dust, just like my wife and everyone else I’d seen die.

Three months ago, my life had been, if not perfect, then satisfying to my wife and me. We had been married for eight years, and we had decided to not have children. We operated a small bakery, where my wife did the baking, and I made the deliveries and helped with the store front. We had a satisfying niche in one of Houston’s trendy downtown neighborhoods, which provided us a good living.

Then, one morning, I noticed an odd rash on my wife’s forehead and cheeks. By that afternoon, she was so weak I had to carry her to the car. I rushed to the nearest clinic, only to find dozens of other people with the same symptoms. I checked online, and every social media outlet was flooded with similar reports. The student nurse that examined her said that the doctors were completely mystified, and that they had no treatments that worked. All of the hospitals and emergency rooms were completely overrun, and so I took my wife home.

Over the next two days, she became weaker and weaker, until she could barely walk or eat. Then, I became violently ill with vomiting, diarrhea, fever, and chills. I was so sick that my wife tried to care for me. She had none of my symptoms, but she still had the strange rash and debilitating weakness. We did what we could for each other over the next two days. The worst of my symptoms passed, but my wife’s did not. By evening, she was unable to walk or eat, and all I was able to do was have her drink a little water.

At ten forty-five in the evening of the fifth day, my wife died in my arms. By morning, all that was left of her body was about two pounds of gray powder. I carefully gathered it into a decorative jar and stored it in my closet until I could find some way to make her a memorial.

I recovered quickly from my own symptoms, but others weren’t so fortunate. The Internet was so inundated with reports from all over the world that the service collapsed in some areas. My neighbors came down with the illness in droves, and the nightly news carried stories of a pandemic of a magnitude that no one had ever even imagined. There were no treatments, and no cure. Oddly, no one else reported vomiting, fevers, or the rest of what I’d experienced. The killer symptoms were a rash and a general weakness that worsened until the victim died.

By the beginning of the second week, it was far too dangerous to venture out. So, I stayed in our subdivision and, along with a few armed neighbors, patrolled our little area to keep rioters and looters at bay. The show of force worked most of the time, but by the third week, we’d shot a dozen people who simply didn’t care if they lived or died. Many of my neighbors fell sick and died, too. They all said to take what they had for those of us who were still healthy. The worst part was the children. They perished within three days of the rash’s appearance, weakening quickly as the disease took its course.

After the sixth week, the utility services began to shut down for lack of manpower. Nearly all businesses were shuttered, including the petroleum plants that lined the coast. I spent my time gathering supplies, especially propane tanks for my vehicle and generators. My neighbors’ empty houses yielded food, weapons, ammo and other supplies, and I gathered the surviving neighbors into the empty houses closest to mine, so I could help them.

By the time my last neighbor died, everything was shut down. There was no electrical power, no natural gas service, no phone service, and no Internet. Before the lights went out, the local television station, manned only by one of the cameramen, broadcast that they were going off the air. His face was covered in the now-familiar rash, and he talked in gasping breaths as he said goodbye.

When everything went dark, I thought of just putting my rifle’s muzzle under my chin, and ending it all. Something, somewhere inside of me, stopped me. I was not sick. Surely, I couldn’t be the only healthy person on the planet. Of course, I could contract the disease and die, too, but I was still here. Maybe it was stubbornness, or just pure hubris, but I refused to simply give up like so many others had.

So, I continued on with the business of living. This was a new world, and I had to learn the rules if I wished to survive. Although the humans were gone, the animals were not. I’d seen groups of dogs wandering about, and I knew better than to dismiss them as lost pets. Prudence demanded that I be armed at all times, and that my home be well protected.

As nice as it was, my suburban home made a poor fort, and I’d spent the last four days investigating several industrial buildings in the area. I’d found a building late yesterday that fit my needs. It was solidly built with concrete walls and a steel roof, all designed to survive a hurricane. It had a garage area with a rollup door and an office area that would work nicely as my new home.

As I worked on the propane fuel system, I thought about my next steps. By now, most of the gasoline in the area was useless, so that made most of the cars and trucks available to me useless, as well. The diesel powered vehicles would be reliable for another eight or nine months, and then their fuel would deteriorate, too. After that, propane would be the only choice for vehicle fuel. Breaking down or worse, running out of fuel would be a death sentence with no one around to help, so I was very careful about that.

I had salvaged three diesel powered pickups from my neighborhood, and I could refuel all of them at a business’s vehicle maintenance facility close to my new home. With the trucks, I planned to move everything I could salvage from my subdivision. I’d have to abandon the trucks, since the new home was ten miles away, and I refused to risk riding in anything smaller than my delivery truck, just in case I broke down and needed a temporary base with supplies.

I sniffed, which startled me, and then I felt the tears running down my cheeks. I had not cried during the whole ordeal, not once. Maybe I was too focused on survival, or maybe I pushed the grief away. Now though, I sat on that tailgate and started to cry, and then to weep. I screamed at God in my grief and fury – and then it started to rain.

The cold water shocked me, and then I didn’t care anymore. I sat there screaming and cursing while the rain shower soaked me to the skin. How long I sat there, I don’t know. Finally, I took a breath and sat up straight.