The Long Goodbye: A Post-Apocalyptic Medical Thriller Series (Graham's Resolution Book 7) Read online

  The Long Goodbye

  Graham’s Resolution, Book 7

  A. R. Shaw

  Apocalyptic Ventures, LLC

  Copyright © 2021 by A. R. Shaw

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For my Readers…this series took life because of you.

  Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Contents

  Foreword

  1. Graham

  2. Macy

  3. Clarisse

  4. Rick

  5. Paige

  6. Graham

  7. Dalton

  8. Macy

  9. Rick

  10. Graham

  11. Bang

  12. Rick

  13. Macy

  14. Bang

  15. Rick

  16. Graham

  17. Bang

  18. Graham

  19. Macy

  20. Graham

  21. Sam

  22. Bang

  23. Sam

  24. Graham

  25. Bang

  26. Graham

  27. Addy

  28. Graham

  29. Bang

  30. Clarisse

  31. Rick

  32. Graham

  33. Bang

  34. Clarisse

  35. Rick

  36. Bang

  37. Graham

  38. Clarisse

  39. Rick

  40. Bang

  41. Graham

  42. Clarisse

  43. Bang

  44. Graham

  45. Tehya

  46. Paige

  47. Rick

  48. Graham

  49. Clarisse

  50. Graham

  51. Rick

  52. Graham

  53. Bang

  54. Graham

  55. Bang

  56. Graham

  57. Bang

  58. Graham

  59. Sam

  60. Bang

  61. Graham

  62. Paige

  63. Graham

  64. Bang

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by A. R. Shaw

  Foreword

  I once solved problems for a living. Not the kind that I solve now, ones I’d never fathomed in my life before.

  I once thought I was developing anxiety from commuting to my day job through the slow and clogging bowels of a Seattle highway. I was wrong. I now know the difference between boredom and anxiety.

  I once was a man with a wife and a child on the way. I thought I knew love and contentment. Surely I understood those feelings? But what I soon came to learn was that love is a weakness and often leads to despair. And yet you cannot help but love. I learned this lesson over and over again and will continue to fall victim to this unending cycle. So why love?

  I once thought pouring earth over my dead father’s face was the hardest thing I’d endure. I was wrong. I have no memory of burying my pregnant wife; perhaps my father did this as a kindness. But I do remember burying the next woman I loved after she gave birth to our daughter. And then I was destroyed for a time but had no excuse to neglect the living.

  I once thought killing a man was the last thing I would ever do. But I soon found that killing was a requirement in this world, if you intended others to survive.

  I seldom think of my old world because I’m too busy living in this one. And when I do look back, those images are more faded and more opaque than they were before, like pale sheets of yellow vellum.

  It’s the future that I see now. And in that future, I see a little girl running with an old dog through fields of tall grass once mowed to perfection. Her legs carry her far and swift and the dog dashes behind her, pushing her onward and up to a creation of man that once held back seas but now only stands as a reminder of those who once were but will never be again. The steps are tall and hard and when she stumbles the dog nudges her onward.

  1

  Graham

  He held the steady cadence in his ear like a tether and tore his eyes away from his son in the bed and looked out the window on the other side of the room. Past the boy in the bed, admitting to himself the boy was a man now, but Bang would forever be his boy. One beep followed another. The pale-yellow window glass was smudged since the end of time, except for the center of one pane, busted out long ago. The edges were chipped of paint and nearly cracked out, but through the pane, Graham glanced into a field of golden wheat, each strand waving. The sun had nearly made its return to rest once again, giving way to a cool evening breeze so soft it found its way back through the broken panes and into the hot room where Graham’s eyes once again landed on his son’s rising chest, keeping the beat of a machine that was powered by battery packs strewn along the tile floor that heated the space even more than the day’s late summer sun.

  One beep followed another. He willed the steady drum with his dry eyes, and yet he wouldn’t blink as he sat there in the chair next to Bang’s bed. Canals of sweat trailed slowly down the sides of his face, neck, and under his arms along the itchy parts of his chest, and he barely breathed to keep from waking the other child who shared a part of his heart that he nearly lost in one day, Tehya, whose body was draped across his middle like a lazy Lab. What mattered was that he had both of them safe, at least for now. His eyes bound one now, as he held the other.

  Only Bang wasn’t safe…not yet. He knew this because he heard Clarisse sobbing in the hallway earlier when she didn’t think he could hear past the doorway.

  “It’s okay,” Dalton had urged her. “He’s going to be fine.”

  “I don’t know that yet. There’s nothing else I can do…” she admitted, choking on each word. “He either lives or he dies,” she choked out. “He was fine until the infection…there’s just nothing else…”

  “He’s a strong kid, Clarisse,” Dalton whispered. “He’s determined. He’s going to make it.”

  She didn’t say anything for a while, but Graham imagined her looking up into Dalton’s eyes and shaking her head…too afraid to utter what might be true. Bang might be too far gone. Bang might not make it after everything…after the battle of a lifetime.

  “We have to get Graham out of there. He won’t leave,” he heard her whisper next after the silence.

  His eyes had flashed away from Bang to the doorway behind him for one mere second as he said in a voice more ragged than he’d intended in a single word that meant don’t even try, “No…” He meant it kindly but firmly.

  There were no more whispers from the hallway after that. Only the scuffle of shoes retreating. Graham returned his gaze then and settled Tehya against his chest a little more when she stirred, kissing the top of her sweaty head. There would be no taking him from them. Not until Bang was out of the woods…and then he would enter the woods willingly. But that wasn’t a worry at the moment. He’d failed them. He would not fail them again. His daughter, once as free as a fawn running through the golden field on the other side of the glass pane, was now terrorized…and it was all his fault.

  2

  Macy

  “Why does she get to keep the dog?” McCann said, as his silhouette blocked the light from the open doorway of the bar.

&n
bsp; Macy laughed. It was the dejected tone he used, as if they’d lost some popularity contest between Paige and the rest of them. She could also tell he had a toothpick clenched between his teeth by the way his words mumbled out.

  Macy flipped the bar towel over one shoulder and picked up the baby next. “I tried to get Sheriff to come this way. He won’t. Sheriff doesn’t do anything Sheriff doesn’t want to do, and he wants to be with Paige when he’s not with us. It’s all right. She brings him over once a day and then she appears again out of nowhere and comes back to get him, whistles outside the building and Sheriff goes to her. We’ve known him all this time and I know it’s hard to get used to a stranger taking him over.”

  “She’s not a stranger to him. He knew her from before.”

  “Yeah.” Macy gave a little shudder as she flashed back to the dead man in the police car that she and Marcy came across years before, when they were only girls…the one she’d draped a blanket over. “I think I was the last one to meet her brother.” She shook her head. “She doesn’t know that. She said his name was Lincoln.”

  “You should tell her. It might help make a connection. She keeps to herself…too much if you ask me. Where’s she staying…have we figured that out yet?”

  “No. She brings Cheryl and the dogs back and forth. I offered her a room here in the building or Graham’s house since no one’s there, but she refused and said she was more comfortable where she’s at.”

  “In the woods?”

  “I don’t know. She doesn’t say much. Graham’s the only one who can talk to her and he won’t leave Bang’s side, and Tehya’s starting to smell. I wish he’d let me give her a bath. It’s been weeks since the war. If that’s what we’re calling it now.”

  McCann ran a hand through his hair and let out a long breath. “That’s the least of our problems, darling.” He turned then, letting the full light cast an angled beam inside, invading the cool, damp dark of the barroom.

  And by the looks of his bloodshot eyes as he neared, she’d almost forgotten what a mess they were in. It was paradise to forget for a while. To wipe down a counter. To tend the baby. She nodded then, and reality came swinging back in when Rick came through the door with the guy named Corey beside him. She still couldn’t get used to his accent or the way he dressed like an Indian, as if he were wearing a costume from some Western movie set.

  Neither of them looked too happy and were a bit pale if she was honest, but that was because they’d just come from the radio room, and she knew why. It was her turn next. She’d kept a count of the dead and the dying and although it was grim work…it was her work.

  “We caused this,” Rick said in a sharp tone. They’d been arguing or something like arguing.

  Rick gave her a sharp nod as his eyes met hers and she waved to McCann as she took the baby with her down the long hall past the bar to the little room in the back where she could hear the radio chatter louder as she neared.

  “We didn’t cause this,” Corey said next.

  “We damn sure didn’t prevent it, either,” Rick said before she could no longer hear the exchange.

  She gently laid the baby down in the crib in the corner and wiped the sweat from her forehead as she turned and faced the table with all the equipment laid out. The heat from the machines made the tight space even more unbearable, so she took a second and propped open the back door to let the breeze flow through the space.

  Next to the mic, a green lined paper pad with a spiral at the top lay bare except for the penciled-in new numbers beside the ones from her last shift. Rick’s handwriting was a little sloppier than her neat print but she still made out the number. Twenty-four more souls were listed in the casualty side. Twenty-four more human beings who had survived the impossible for years were now murdered since the last time she sat at the desk a few hours ago. But that’s where she stopped herself. That was close enough to the edge. She had to do her job, no matter what it took to keep the emotion out of it; she had to take it all in so that others were prepared to fight back and end this once and for all. Knowing the baby would sleep through the next half hour with the hum of electronics in the room, Macy picked up the headset and, in that veil, she went from mother and wife to recorder of ruin.

  3

  Clarisse

  It slipped through her fingers. As if time itself slowed that instant, Clarisse marveled how her eyes tracked the plummeting descent of the glass beaker that was once within her grasp.

  Her mouth opened slightly, her dark ebony hair pulled back in a bun, her glasses reflecting the fall. The glass shattered at the edge of her hiking boot, cascading little shards in a circumference of a mini impact zone like an asteroid hitting Earth.

  She stood there, looking down, hands out as she peered around her left leg, realizing she’d blocked part of the disaster. A human shield.

  She began to lift her boot when Dalton came through the door. “Don’t move. I’ll get it.”

  She looked up at him. Her glasses had slid down the slope of her nose a bit. “I just ruined it.”

  He began to take a step. “Do I need to gear up? Was it…volatile?”

  “No. I didn’t get to the volatile part yet,” she said, not succeeding in keeping the frustration out of her voice. “I’ll have to start over.”

  He went to the cupboard and pulled out a broom and dustpan and then approached the impact zone carefully and reached for her hand to guide her out. “Clarisse, you really need some sleep. What are you working on? It’s late.”

  Without stepping away when he grasped her hand, she raised her eyes to meet his. “You know...”

  He sighed. “Yes. I do know. But look, I can feel you shaking. You didn’t eat dinner and you’re exhausted. Do me a favor. Don’t do this tonight. Sleep first.”

  There was something in the way the beaker fell and how her mind tracked the entire motion to the explosion point. The whole scene replayed in her mind before she answered. “Okay.” He was right. She was tired and hungry, and she’d make a mistake at precisely the wrong time if she pushed herself through the night. It wasn’t worth it. She had to be prepared to do it right or not at all. “But I’ve got to check on Graham first…I mean Bang.”

  “I know who you mean,” Dalton said. “Go ahead. I’ll clean this up and wait for you.”

  “McCann will be here in a second.”

  “Is he going to get Graham to take a break?”

  “No. Bang’s temperature went down to normal a few hours ago. He’s going to be okay, but he’s got a long recovery.”

  “That’s great news! Has he talked about the battle?”

  She shook her head and smiled because she knew if she answered the question just then, her voice would crack.

  Dalton pulled her to his chest and wrapped his free arm around her. “He’s going to be fine. We’ll all get through this. Now go. Do your checking. I’ll meet you outside.”

  She stepped into the impact free zone and stomped off any remaining glass fragments as Dalton swept up the mess.

  In the darkened hall, she saw the ambient glow from Bang’s room shine through. And hearing voices, she walked faster.

  “Can you feel this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Here?”

  “Yeah.”

  It was Bang’s answer that made her sprint to a near run. She rounded the corner to see McCann standing at the foot of Bang’s bed.

  “Oh my. You’re awake. You were still asleep the last I saw you,” Clarisse gasped, seeing Bang’s eyes open. Slapping her hands to her face, she nearly knocked her own glasses to the floor. She swallowed and blinked a few times. And when she thought she might be able to speak without crying, she said, “It’s so great to see you moving around. You had me worried there for a while.”

  Bang smiled at her. He was weak and pale, but he was among the living.

  “Don’t…don’t move too much. We’ll get the monitors off,” she said, and followed Bang’s gaze to Graham, who sat silent and unmoving in the ch
air beside him, with Tehya still asleep in his arms.

  “Dad?” Bang whispered.

  Clarisse looked to Graham and saw that he wasn’t looking at his son; instead, he gazed out the window into the darkness. Then he turned to Bang after an eerie beat.

  He smiled and said, “Yeah, I’m here, son.”

  Bang looked to her first. Then he said, “You look tired, Dad.”

  “He’s been here the whole time since the fever started,” McCann said, breaking the awkward silence.

  Clarisse busied herself with peeling away the monitors from Bang’s skin and then took her stethoscope from around McCann’s outstretched hand and listened to Bang’s chest.

  “Sounds good,” she said, smiling at him.

  “I was awake before. What’s the big deal?” Bang said.

  “Well, the infection took over and put you in danger again,” she said. “McCann, let’s keep this clean and keep his dosage up.”