Chapter 1

I didn't know, when I first recovered from the sickness, that the world had gone to hell in a handbasket. The electricity was still on in my apartment, and I staggered to the fridge and got some leftovers, heated them in the microwave, and sat down in front of the TV to eat.

As I sat there in my underwear, gnawing on a chicken leg, I used the remote to turn the box on, only to find some public service notice filling the screen. Annoyed, I changed channels - to find a similar notice. One channel after another I flipped through only to discover that they were all the same.

Disgusted, I almost turned the thing off, but something told me I should probably read the notice, first.

That was when I learned that I was one of the few survivors of whatever disease had knocked me down with that fever. That wasn't good.

I walked slowly back to my bedroom, trying not to pass out, and grabbed my cell phone.

With a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, I began calling every number in my phone's memory. No answer on any of them. Crap! Was I the ONLY survivor? Probably not, but there couldn't be very damned many!

I noticed the light blinking on my answering machine so I pushed the playback button.

"Gavin?" Melinda's voice sounded weak and strained, "Oh Gavin, please be there! I - I've got the sickness sweetheart, and I don't think I'm going to make it. If you get this, please call me on my cell phone. I love you!"

I punched up her speed dial number, over and over again. The time stamp on the message was two days ago. No answer now. Nor was there any answer at her mother's or her sister's. What a hell of a time to have to visit relatives in Chicago!

I was too weak to do anything about it yet, but as I lay there on the sweat-soaked sheets, I knew I had to do something pretty quick.

Three days it took to get me back on my feet for most of the day. I figured if I took it easy, I'd be able to go a bit longer each day. For those three days, I thought and schemed and planned as best I could for what I knew and what I couldn't know, and every day, I tried Melinda's numbers again. Every day, I got the same result. I resisted, hoping against hope, the temptation to throw the cell phone through the window.

When I finally felt up to getting on with my life, I knew where I wanted to go first. My bicycle threaded its way across town, dodging cars that had simply stopped, or worse, crashed. I kept wanting to stop and help the occupants, and had to constantly remind myself that there was nothing I could do for them. Crossing the causeway to Mare Island, I was almost overwhelmed by the eerie silence. Never, in all my years in Vallejo, had I heard the lapping of waves on the pilings of the Mare Island causeway, simply because there was always too much traffic and other activity. Today, the only unnatural sound was my bike.

The Army Reserve Transportation depot was locked up tight as a drum, but a padlock is no match for a tire iron and, with no one around to stop me, I broke in. My first stop was the motor pool. The lock on the office door was no harder than the one on the gate, but the one on the key cabinet was a little tougher. I wound up tearing the cabinet doors off their hinges, instead.

I had no idea which keys I needed, but I grabbed a handful and walked to the biggest truck on the lot - an M900, 5 ton 6x6. The seventh key slipped in and turned. The engine caught after only a few turns of the starter and rumbled easily at idle after a few roars as I worked the accelerator. I left it in Neutral with the brake on and tossed my mountain bike into the bed.

It had been a while since I had driven anything this big, so it jerked and bounced a bit as I got it moving. To my gratification, the tanks read full, and I left it idling as I pulled up in front of the building that housed the weapons locker.

M16s were plentiful, as was the ammo for them, so I took several armloads and as much ammunition as I could find. Same with .45s and their ammo. I looked longingly at the machine guns, and after a mental coin toss loaded a 7.62mm machine gun and several boxes of belts. Hedging my bets, I also picked up a SAW. Some hand-grenades, claymores, and flak jackets rounded out my 'purchases.' As an afterthought, I picked up a few Ka-bars, strapping one of the knives around me with a web belt. Just in case, I loaded one of the M16A4s and a 9mm sidearm and took them into the cab of the truck with me.

The covered bed of the truck was nowhere near full, and that was just as well. I had a few more stops to make.

Back across the causeway, I turned right onto Mare Island way and followed it around to Sonoma Blvd, where I turned right. A couple of blocks up I turned onto Bennet and, instead of wasting time with the tire iron, just drove the truck through the gate into the lot. There wasn't much there that I wanted that I hadn't already picked up from the Army, but I backed up to a HMMV and hitched it to the rear of the truck. A quick search, and I came away with a few shoulder-fired rocket launchers and a set of detailed topographical maps of California and its surroundings. Those would come in handy for what I intended.

Having completed my major purchases, I made one more stop at my apartment and picked up the duffel bag that contained the few clothes and personal effects that I wanted to take with me.

A quick tour of the major parts of Vallejo turned up no other survivors, until I hit the intersection of Broadway and Sereno, where a woman in a nurse's scrubs flagged me down.

I stopped, and looking carefully around, helped her into the cab. She was a pretty Filipina in her twenties, and when she finished sobbing and thanking me, I discovered her name was Corazon.

"I tried to help them, but they all died!" she sobbed over and over. "Then I got sick, and when my fever broke, everyone was dead! Even the doctors!"

"I know, Cora," I tried to console her. "There aren't many of us left at all. You're the first one I've seen in Vallejo."

"What will we do?!" she wailed into my shoulder.

"Well, the first thing you need to do is pull yourself together," I said. "With no one left in authority, there will be some who will turn to violence to get what they want. My plan is to gather together as many like-minded people as I can and find a safe place where we can start over. I'd like you to go with me, if you want to."

"I have to go home. I have to see if my I can find my husband and my daughter!"

"Where do you live?"

It was only a few blocks away, and I locked up the truck in the middle of the street and followed her inside, just in case. They were dead in the living room. The little girl had apparently died in his arms before he, too, succumbed. It was several minutes before I could get her to calm down and pack a bag. Jeans, jackets, even scrubs - all utilitarian clothing.

Partly to keep her mind busy, and partly because we would need the supplies, I drove back to the Kaiser hospital where she had worked and had Cora round up all the medical gear that could be used in the absence of electricity. It was hard on her, again seeing the doctors and nurses that she had known lying dead there, but she stuck it out. She didn't know as many of the people at the Sutter Solano Medical Center when we stopped there, but it was still a struggle for her. Strangely, fighting the emotions evoked by seeing dead co-workers and acquaintances seemed to take her mind off the loss of her family, if only for a while

At the Raley's on Broadway, I ignored the stuff on the shelves and in the coolers and rummaged around the back, using the supermarket's hand truck to load box after box of canned meat and vegetables, rice, beans, dehydrated potatoes, flour, sugar, salt, and anything else that looked like it might have a reasonable shelf life, as well as several cases of bottled water. Cora, still fighting tears, rifled the Pharmacy, coming away with antibiotics, bandages, and as much other first aid stuff as possible, all thrown into industial strength garbage bags.

By the time we returned to the cab, her eyes were dry and there was a determined look on her face. That was about as good as I could hope for, in these trying circumstances, and I gave her a quick, friendly hug.

Carl's sports emporium provided us with camping gear and water purification equipment. I ignored the propane powered stuff. I might be able to scrounge the fuel for a while, but it would eventually run out, and I figured Mother Nature would provide us with what we needed for cooking and heating.