“Welcome to Moreno Valley!” The sign hung lazily off a wooden post sideways. Moreno Valley was home, it was where she’d been trying to get all along. Now that she’d finally made it, she wished she’d have thought better of it. Home, her home, was gone. Everything she’d known and loved had been decimated.
Lark stood in the hot July sunshine. That was the only thing that was as it should be. Summers were notoriously hot in her home town. Her green short sleeved T shirt clung to her sticky skin leaving her feeling dirty and irritated. It seemed that considering the circumstances, the sun would show her poor home town some mercy and back the hell off.
The roads were still intact for the most part, that had been the same everywhere she’d been so far. Buildings were torn asunder. She hardly recognized the place. The hills surrounding the city acted as a compass for Lark. She knew exactly where she was in relation to those hills. Her old high school had been directly across the street from the base of those hills. She knew her way anywhere in the city from there.
The high school. Lark’s eyes stung. All of those kids were gone. They’d never walk across the stage at graduation. They’d never make it to senior pictures or wear a letterman’s jacket again. She and all of her siblings graduated from there. This was not how her home coming was supposed to be. She was supposed to show up at her mom’s house unannounced. She was supposed to hug and kiss her nieces and nephews and show them all the cool stuff she’d brought them from overseas and tell them how she read every letter and kept every picture they’d sent her. She was supposed to get her hair and nails done with her sisters and catch a game with her brother. Nothing was how it was supposed to be.
Lark revved the engine on her stolen motorcycle and moved forward, trying to keep her mind off of her family. That would make it too hard to move forward. All she wanted was to rummage through the neighborhood her mom lived in and find something, anything of her families to keep. She needed a memento that they had in fact actually existed. She needed proof that there had been people out there who loved her and missed her, once upon a time. That was her only plan. She had to connect to her family somehow in some way.
“We are the mighty fighting Cougars, turquoise black and white” she began to sing the old fight song as she rode slowly past the remains of her old high school. “True to thee our hearts will be, triumphant in each fight. Fight, fight, fight.” The tears streamed down her dusty face as she motored on past the empty cars stalled and stopped in the road around her.
She still couldn’t figure it out; how they’d done it. How had they managed to blast almost everyone alive to dust, and still leave buildings and cars even partially intact. There were so few remains. The first several days, there were piles of ash where people used to be, but after that it was as the old adage said, dust to dust. There was nothing left. And they’d thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction…
It was a short ride up Pigeon Pass road. The neighborhood Albertson’s didn’t look as if had been raided very much. That was a bad sign. No raiders meant no survivors. She knew it was unlikely, but she’d hoped against hope that maybe somebody, any of her family or friends, had survived. By the looks of things, no one had. She’d heard that big cities and cities with military installments got hit the worst. While Moreno Valley was by no means a big city, it did house March Air Force Base; the base with the 7th largest military communications ability in the entire nation.
Lark rode further into the city, making her way down eerily quiet streets. Packs of dogs, once tame and house broken roamed the streets. It only took weeks for them to revert back to their more base natures. Lark knew to steer clear of them altogether. There was no point in wasting bullets on Fido when there were far worse predators out there: the survivors.
Just like in a war zone, the seemingly innocent survivors posed the worst threat. People who survived would resort to any measure to maintain their survival. She’d seen this in war and again after the world ended. Regular people turned into thieves, killers, and predators of the small and weak. The worst of these, she hated to admit were surviving military and law enforcement for the most part. Most already had God complexes before the world ended. Their surviving it only fed those same polluting thought patterns. Lark knew first hand. She was ex law enforcement and a current soldier.
Even worse than the survivors were the semi-survivors. No, they weren’t dead yet, but they were well on their way. As far as Lark could tell, these were the people who had been exposed to whatever had killed everyone else, but not enough to die instantly. You couldn’t always tell who they were until they were close by, but once they were there was no mistaking them. Their whites of their eyes always took a distinct yellow color, not like someone with jaundice. No, it was more of a deep yellow, where you could never tell that they were once white.
The yellowing was only the beginning. They were all sick, the semi-survivors. Everyone of them she’d come by looked as if they were in the final stages of cancer. Their cheeks were hollow, they had dark circles under their eyes, and they maintained often hacked and wheezed towards the end. The end was the worst. They all became violent, inexplicably so, as if they’d lost all humanity altogether. They were feral, like an animal with rabies. That was the final stage. Either they would suddenly drop dead from whatever had infected them, or they’d remain in the feral stage for as long as they survived. Lark wasn’t partial to letting them live that long.
The first few days after the end of the world, Lark had met up with a woman and her son, no more than 3 years old, and agreed to travel with them. The woman was infected. Lark watched as her infection progressed until one night she woke to the sounds of the woman beating her son’s lifeless body into the concrete floor. The woman was literally foaming at the mouth and spattered in the blood of her toddler son. One bullet later, Lark decided that the infected were not worth trying to save.
It was a short ride before she arrived at her Mom’s home. The windows had been blasted out by the initial event 7 weeks before. Everything was toppled over and on the floor. Lark entered cautiously, unsure of the homes structural integrity. Lark called on her sense of calm as she walked through the remains of her mother’s home. Some pictures still hung on the walls. Mom loved hanging family pictures, they were all over the house. Lark didn’t hesitate to gather several of the photos of her family, all that she could manage, and stuff them in her knap sack.
The sound of rustling in the kitchen froze Lark in her place. Something was there, moving around. She didn’t have the faith to hope it was a member of her family so he decided to err on the side of caution and draw her fire arm. The Beretta 92F fit comfortably in her hands. This was standard issue in the Air Force, and she’d gotten practice with handling it.
Lark crept slowly through the house, listening intently to the rustling in the kitchen. The sound stopped abruptly when she approached the entrance. Whatever she had heard, had obviously heard her too. Her pulse pounded. Lark had no desire to kill anyone in her mother’s kitchen. Something just felt very wrong about spraying blood all over her mom’s granite counter tops.
She inhaled slowly, released the safety of her side arm and swung into the kitchen with her weapon drawn at the source of the sound. Two big brown eyes looked back at her scared and confused.
“Charlie?” Lark was ecstatic to see a surviving member of the family. “Charlie it’s me! Come here!” She got down on one knee and opened her arms to Charlie, her mom’s pet Chow. She’d named her Charlie after the star of ‘All Dogs go to Heaven’. Charlie never left her mother’s side since she’d gotten her as a puppy five years before. It made sense that she would still be at the place she’d seen her last… waiting.
The dog hesitated, sniffed the air, then, after deciding that Lark were safe, she galloped up and leapt into her arms, barking jovially. She was as happy to see Lark as she was to see her.
“Charlie girl, have you been in Mom’s fridge again?” she said petting the dog and scratching behind her perky ears. The refrigerator door was still opened. Charlie had learned that trick in her early adolescence. She would sneak in, open the door, grab a snack and book. She was a very crafty dog. That is probably what had kept her alive in the past 6 weeks.
The dog jumped down and began barking, running towards the back of the house. Weapon still drawn, Lark followed her back. Her chest tightened when she saw where Charlie had lead her. It was her mom’s special prayer room. The door was still shut, the way it always had been. That was Mom’s place she met with God and no one else, save Charlie, could come in.
The dog jumped up on the door and whined, looking back at Lark for help. She wanted in. Lark’s eyes burned and her throat constricted with grief. Her poor dog wanted to get in and find Mom. She holstered her weapon and with shaky hands, turned the knob and opened the door.
Lark gasped. The room was completely untouched by the blast. Nothing had changed. All around the room, on all the walls were pictures of every member of the family. Mom had used them to lay hands on when she prayed. There was a large desk, with Mom’s good Bible opened wide and next to it was her notepad where she scribbled in her special prayers and thoughts. Mom had done that for as long as Lark could remember. She had to have hundreds of those little notebooks somewhere. Also on the desk was a large bottle of anointed oil. The cap was off. Mom had been praying for someone when the world ended. That wasn’t surprising. Upon further inspection of the notebook, Lark’s attention was grabbed. The first word on the top of the sheet read her name. Mom had been writing about her.
“Lark,
I know it’s got to be hard for you, fighting to survive, fighting for all of us. You need to know that your family is always here, no matter how far away we seem. We all love you and we all miss you baby. We understand why you’re gone. The world needs you to fight for them, to fight for all of us. We need you to fight so that the kids in this family can survive. They need something to live for baby, and you are going to give it to them. Never give up, no matter how hard it gets. God has a plan for your life, never forget it. If you ever feel lost, go to him, and he will lead you home. I love you Lark,
Momma”
The tears streamed down her face. Charlie whimpered sadly at Lark’s feet, sensing the woman’s pain. She hadn’t allowed herself time to feel the pain before, but now in Mom’s house it was unavoidable. The pain was everywhere all at once, tearing at her soul making her feel trapped by the loss. She couldn’t escape it. The sobs came hard and heavy. Lark fell to her knees, balling hard for the first time since everything had changed
Everything really had changed. Her mother was gone, her siblings were gone. Everything and everyone she’d known was gone and all that was left was the pain and a whole hell of a lot of bullets. That made for a very bad combination. Lark wondered how many other survivors ended their own lives after discovering that their whole life was gone. Lark felt suddenly out of control. She was lost.
“If you ever feel lost, go to him, and he will lead you home”
The words came back to her as if her mother was standing over her speaking them. Go to God? What was that supposed to do after the entire world had ended. This wasn’t a Bible story, this was real life and everything hurt. There was no silver lining. Surviving had been a curse.
“He will lead you home.”
“Okay Mom, okay. I’m going.” Lark spoke to the room, angry at it for being empty but so full of her mother at the same time. “I’m going to God, but if he doesn’t lead me home, I’m finding my own way.” She said squeezing the handle of her weapon. This was no way to live.
“Come on Charlie.” Lark called to the dog. In no time she’d gathered whatever supplies she could from her mother’s home, including Charlie’s water bowl. There were still clean blankets, sheets and towels in the cupboards, and several other odds and ends that would come in handy. She’d salvaged any and all canned food items she could manage, and took two hand can openers with her. She already had one, but extra’s were always handy.
It wasn’t difficult to hotwire the neighbor’s pickup truck. Lark needed something she could load her bike on. She threw her supplies and knap sack in the back and Charlie rode shotgun. Lark was going to the only place she could think of to find God. Lark was going to church. If God didn’t meet her there, she only hoped he would meet her in heaven.
The pickup rumbled into the parking lot. Her church hadn’t been at this location for a number of years, but it was where she best remembered God. The building had since been turned into an Army recruitment center, but it would always be an old church to her. Now, at the end of everything, that was all that mattered.
The glass doors were shattered and Lark needed but to step through them. The building still had lights, flickering though they may be. Due to the lack of windows, it could get very dark inside, even during a bright summer day. Lark pushed through the swinging doors of what used to be the sanctuary. She and Charlie hopped over fallen chairs and felled office furniture until she made it to what used to be the alter. Lark hit her knees in her fatigues, the way she had often as a child.
“Okay God, here I am. What is you want from me.” She said half heartedly. She’d only considered this because it was what her mother suggested post mortem. She didn’t actually expect a response. That was more up her mother’s alley.
“Hey!” A booming voice called form behind.
“I’m trying to pray here, please give me a moment.” Lark sighed and bowed her head.
“Hey, I’m talking to you! What the hell are you doing here! This is Army Property!” The voice boomed again with the resonance of a drill sergeant. Charlie turned and growled menacingly at the man intruding on Lark’s prayers. She was not pleased. Lark imagined it was due to being her mother’s dog. Charlie was probably very familiar with prayer.
Slowly, Lark stood, shoulders sagging heavily. She’d come here to find God and this was what he’d sent? She placed her hand on her holster. She wasn’t in the mood for this. She could hear the man rushing towards her and she measured the sound of his steps as her barreled forward. Without so much as blinking first, Lark turned, pulled her weapon, released the safety and shot the charging man directly between the eyes 10 feet before he got to her. He stopped dead in his tracks and dropped backwards with a loud thud. The dog hid behind Lark’s legs.
“Sorry Charlie, but I really hate the infected. I just don’t have the patience.” She scratched the dog behind the ears reassuringly.
“Okay Mom! I came” she hollered into the empty room, listening to her own voice echo back. “I came here and I didn’t find anything! I’m still lost!” She was miserable. Charlie began barking into the silence. Lark was grateful for someone to share in her lament. She’d been alone for too long, not having anyone she could trust. She was glad for the company, if only from her mom’s dog. Then Charlie took off running.
“Come back here!” Lark called after her would be companion. She didn’t want to be left alone before she found her way home her own way. Charlie had darted into the halls of the old building. In the back were the rooms where they used to have Sunday school and Bible studies for the kids. Her older sister had been one of the teachers for the teen group way back in the day. The class had been held a room that was intended for storage, but they’d loved it as teens. It was cool to have class in an old storage room with a metal door and no ventilation. It was the kind of place that you could never find in the building unless you already knew it was there. That was exactly where Charlie had gone. She jumped up and down, scratching at the door excitedly.
“Come on girl, there hasn’t been anything in this room for ages.” Lark tried to console the animal. “Come on Charlie, let’s get the hell out of here.”
That is when she heard it. There was sound coming from the room. Someone was in there.
“Hello?” Lark called out. “Is someone in here? You don’t have to be afraid. I’m not infected, I’m not going to hurt you.” She said as she cocked her weapon.
There was the sound again. There was definitely someone in there. Lark tried the knob. It was locked.
“My name is Lark Hart. I’m an officer in the United States Air Force. I have food and water if you need it.” She said, hoping for a reply. The knob began to turn. When the door opened Lark gasped and nearly dropped her weapon. A teenage girl stood before her with tears in her eyes. Her eyes were wet with unshed tears and she was as dirty as Lark was.
“Kyra?” Lark asked, not sure if what she was seeing was real or if she was finally hallucinating. “Kyra, is that you?” Kyra was her younger cousin. She’d come to live with her mother when Kyra’s mom, Larks’ aunt, could no longer take care of her. She had a real bad problem with drugs, and Mom wouldn’t have the girl growing up on the streets with her sister.
“Lark, you came for us. I knew you would come.” The girl fell into Lark’s arms and sobbed. Lark sobbed with her. As she sobbed with the relieved teenager she refocused on her words.
“Us? You said us.” Kyra straightened and nodded hard.
“Come out you guys.” Lark fell to her knees. Four more children came out from hiding. Her nephew’s Michael and Charles stepped forward first, and then her nieces May and Tanya. Four of the nine of her siblings children had survived. God had lead her home. At that moment Lark knew in her heart that she would lead them home, at pain of death. They needed her to survive.
“Thank you Momma” she whispered into the air.
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