Ghosts and Old Memories (A Pandemic Story) - Part 3/Finale

Here is the conclusion to this portion of Eric's story, but there's enough material in this concept to keep me going for a while. I think I can safely say that this isn't the last you've seen of Eric!

Eric reached down beside the tractor seat and found the rifle he'd stowed there earlier in the morning. The idea that someone else might show up had seemed remote at the time, but now he was glad he'd done it. He turned the tractor towards the main road through the business park and started moving towards the distant vehicle.

He got to within a couple hundred feet of what he could now see was a pickup truck and parked the tractor with the bucket raised to give him a little bit of protection if they had a gun as well. After making sure his rifle was within easy reach and that he had the "borrowed" duty belt secure, he opened the door to the tractor and stepped out onto the step. As he watched, three figures got out of the truck and stood there considering him. He couldn't see any obvious weapons and this made him relax a bit.

"Hello."

It had been so long since Eric had heard another live human voice, he almost started to cry at the sound. He'd heard lots of recorded voices on voicemail and answering systems, but hadn't heard a real live voice in weeks.

"Can you hear me?"

Eric realized that he hadn't answered the...girl? The voice sounded feminine enough that he was pretty sure it was a girl or woman. As he cleared his throat, he thought about how long it had been since he'd talked to someone else and realized the last conversation he could remember had been with his wife, just before she slipped into unconsciousness. He hadn't had the heart to tell her that their daughter had died hours before.

"Sorry," Eric replied; realizing as he did just how Canadian he sounded. "Sorry," he repeated, "it's just been so long since I've talked to another person."

"I know what you mean" the woman said as she walked towards him, hands at her sides. She wasn't carrying a weapon, but that didn't mean there wasn't one hidden under her winter jacket.

"My name's Deb." She reached her hand out to shake his. "The three of us found each other in the city over the last few weeks and formed a bit of a ragtag troop. We saw your car come out here the other day and thought we should take a chance that you might be friendly. I don't know what it's been like for you, but it got a bit rough in the city once the police fell apart."

Eric smiled sympathetically. As hard as it had been for him to be alone, he hadn't had to watch his back like they had apparently had to. "I can believe it. I've been on my own for weeks now, so it's been lonely but not difficult like that." He gestured towards the building he had set up as his 'home', "why don't you three come in and get out of the cold. Believe it or not, there's some heat and I'm working on making it a little bit more habitable."

Deb considered for a few moments before agreeing, and Eric led their vehicle back towards the office building. As they walked into the lobby, Eric got his first chance to see the three newcomers up close. Deb was around his age, and seemed to be the leader of their little group. The other two girls were both younger, one about twenty and the other still a teenager.

Eric turned to them and introduced himself to the other two girls. He explained what he'd been up to in the last few weeks, and what had led him to choose this area to make his new home.

"We were surprised to see someone clearing the snow out here," Deb said. "When Tori" Deb gestured at the teen, "said she saw the tractor working out here, we didn't believe her. When we saw it for ourselves, we knew that we had to come out and see who was stupid enough to be clearing parking lots after a pandemic."

Eric chuckled, "I guess it's not the smartest idea, but I wanted to make people feel like they could join me out here, so I guess it worked."

Deb smiled "I guess it did." She turned to the girls "C'mon girls, we're going to crash here tonight and decide our next move in the morning."

Eric watched as the three women began to unpack sleeping bags and other belongings from the back of the pickup truck. By the looks of it, they had been expecting to bunk down somewhere anyways tonight, and he was happy for the company. He had offered to help them carry stuff a couple of times, but they'd said it wasn't necessary. He showed them the office he'd chosen as his own, and then they chose offices for themselves as sleeping quarters. He noticed that the two younger girls didn't say much, but regarded him with a certain level of distrust.

After they'd gotten themselves organized, Eric invited them to share supper with him. He had a large selection of frozen food available, and after some consideration, they all chose some frozen bacon-wrapped filet mignon. As Eric warmed up the grill, he told them his story. How he'd lost his daughter and his wife, and about rummaging through his neighbours' houses to find food and other supplies.

After he'd finished, Deb looked at the girls and started telling her own story. "I was an ICU nurse and spent a week straight in the ICU trying to keep everything going and care for as many people as I could. On the last day I was there, one of the housekeepers brought me the last of the food from the cafeteria, she'd brought me food regularly, and said that there were only five people left alive in the hospital. All of the other employees had decided that they were all going to be leaving the hospital for good that afternoon. I realized then that I wasn't doing anyone any good by working myself to death."

She took a deep breath, and shuddered as she remembered leaving the hospital. "I picked up my bag from behind the nurse's desk and left the building. I hadn't realized just how bad this pandemic was until I walked through the hospital and didn't find a single other living person."

"Didn't you have any family or friends who were wondering about you?" Eric asked.

"Nope, my parents died a few years ago, and I've spent most of my time working. Never really had a lot of time for socializing." Deb continued with the rest of her story; "After I left the hospital, I went home for the night to figure out what to do next. I got home and I realized that I had no power, no food, and nothing keeping me there. So, I gathered up some of my belongings into my living room and decided what to do next. After a little while, I heard someone yelling down on the street" she gestured at the teenager, "and I saw two men trying to attack Tori here."

"Assholes." Tori muttered under her breath. "Thought they could take me because I was a girl."

"They definitely chose the wrong person to mess with" Deb laughed. "I grabbed a baseball bat and went down to help her out, but by the time I got there, one of them was laying against the wall, and you were throwing the other one over your shoulder."

"They got what they deserved" Tori protested.

"I'm not saying they didn't deserve it, just that they chose the wrong person to mess with."

Tori rolled her eyes, "I'd had a dozen guys think they could have their way with me by that time. Just because nobody else was around, they thought they could get their rocks off by raping me. I made sure it was the last time they ever thought with their cock."

Eric was a little taken aback at the coarseness of the language coming from the little sprite in front of him, but he admired her courage.

"Not long after that, we met Alyssa and she joined us in my apartment. We scavenged as much as we could from the building, and when that ran out we decided to just keep moving until we found a place to stay for a while." Deb looked around the room in which they were all seated as Eric began to serve up the steaks, along with some instant mashed potatoes he'd cooked up in a pot.

"This looks like as good a place as any to stay for the moment", she said.

After the four of them had cleaned their plates, Eric looked at Alyssa. "What's your story, how did you end up with these two?"

Deb interrupted; "That's her story to tell, and she hasn't told us yet. I've told her that we won't press her on it and that she can tell it in her own good time."

She looked at the other two. "C'mon girls, lets get some rest. We can talk about the future in the morning, if you don't mind."

The women made their way down the hall into the offices they had claimed for themselves. Eric heard the three of them talking quietly amongst themselves as they walked away. He cleaned up from supper and settled in for the night. Tomorrow he had to figure out how to get more heat into this building without suffocating everyone from either smoke or carbon monoxide.

He was woken in the morning by quiet voices talking outside his door. As he slowly got to full wakefulness, he listened to the conversation.

"He doesn't seem too bad. I don't get any creep vibes off him." This sounded like Tori.

"He obviously wanted people to find him, you know with plowing the parking lots and everything." This must have been Alyssa, though he hadn't actually heard her voice up close.

"There's something to be said for adding a fourth person to our group" came Deb's voice. "There's shelter here, he obviously has some food, and we could make this into a nice little community with a garden in the summer."

Eric made sure to make noise as he got up and started rustling around the room before opening the door to find the three women in the hall talking quietly about nothing in particular.

"Good morning, would you three like some breakfast?"

As the three of them got up to join him, he opened a package of bacon he'd left out to thaw the night before and turned on his camp stove. He dropped the bacon into the hot cast iron pan and the smell of smoked pork began to fill the room.

As the bacon cooked, he added some frozen hashbrowns and diced onions to make a breakfast hash. Before long the four of them were chowing down on a hot, filling breakfast.

"So," Eric said, "the three of you are welcome to stay as long as you would like. I mean, I'm not the boss around here, but I'd be happy for the company."

"Look Eric, you're a nice guy..." Alyssa started suddenly, surprising him.

"We would be happy to" Deb spoke over Alyssa. "Under a few conditions" she continued.

"Before you get into your conditions, can I share with you my idea of how this community could work?" Eric interrupted. After getting nods from the three women, he continued. "I'm not trying to create a fiefdom, or appoint myself some type of king here. In fact, I think that anyone who joins the community here should be part of the decision making process. I don't think we can make everybody happy all the time, but I think we can find a consensus about what is best for us, even if it's not exactly what we might want personally."

"There are thousands of tonnes of things on the trains in the yard, and if we are smart about how we use them, we can live safely here for years or decades even. I would like this to be a place where everyone who wants to be a productive member can join the community. I have no interest in having people who can't or won't live safely and productively with each other."

"Now," he finished. "If this sounds like something that you can be a part of, then I'm happy to have you here and would be grateful for your company and your help. If not, then I hope you won't throw me out or kill me and would find somewhere else to live."

The three women sat silently for a minute before Tori spoke up. "You know, we could just kick your ass and then leave you in the snow to die."

Alyssa startled them all by suddenly bursting into laughter. "You've been talking about how all you want is to meet one nice guy ever since I met you. Now, we meet one and all you want to do is kick his ass?"

Tori grinned, "well, can you blame me? Look," she said, addressing Eric. "If you're really serious about this, then I'm in. But the second you try any funny shit, I'll drop you on your ass so fast you won't know your ass from your head."

"I don't have anywhere better to be, and this seems like a pretty good place for the moment" Alyssa said. "So, I guess I'm in too."

Deb looked at the other two women and smiled. "I guess I don't really have a choice then, do I? I told you girls that I'd look after you, so if you're sticking around, so am I."

Eric looked at the three women around him, and reached for the pan. "Anybody want seconds? We've got a lot of work to do."

Photos courtesy of
https://www.flickr.com/photos/diamondbackcovers/17050412237
https://pixabay.com/en/teen-girl-retro-hat-winter-snow-1099207/
https://pixabay.com/en/ham-pan-bacon-breakfast-pig-926278/