The Last Handful of Clover - Book 3: The Stone in the Stream

3.15 Voice Mail

June 16, 9:05 am

Jesus Christ, what now? Carla thought, pulling her cruiser to a stop.

She'd been driving for almost two hours, but progress through the ruined city was slow. Most of the roads had accidents or had been blocked, sometimes deliberately. On more than one street Carla had discovered gridlock so unbreakable that the people in the cars had eventually walked away, removing any hope that the streets would be cleared in the foreseeable future.

Sometimes she saw evidence that the drivers hadn't abandoned their vehicles of their own volition. Bodies in burned and shot up cars became something she began to expect around every corner.

But the mess now in front of her looked quite unlike all the others. It was not the result of crashed or abandoned vehicles, but it was because the pavement was actually... gone.

Looking both directions across the torn up roadway, she finally spotted what looked to be a huge bulldozer. A larger one than you would normally see in the confines of the city. This one looked like it would be more at home prowling the open pit at Kennecott, rather than here in the middle of a South Salt Lake street.

Holding her breath, Carla eased her squad car across what appeared to be the least damaged part of the roadbed, ignoring a half dozen bodies—or parts of bodies—crushed in the muddy rubble. When she was finally on her way north again, she breathed a sigh of relief. This part of the city had been almost completely abandoned.

The slowest part about going north was that she had been forced to keep stopping to help people in crisis. She was in this neighborhood because just thirty minutes ago she had finished giving a young kid a ride home, after the eight-year-old girl told her that her mother had killed both her brother and her stepfather. Carla had found her walking down the middle of the street, and she said that she was trying to get home to her father. She took the girl where she needed to go, but the house was empty. The girl insisted on waiting for her father, and Carla had left her there, with admonitions to stay inside and keep the doors locked. And the detour had gotten her no closer to the Avenues, and her search for Howard Gunderson.

For the first time since she had dropped off the kid, she tried checking her radio, but it was still nothing but static. She hadn't even bothered to check her phone for the past couple hours, since it hadn't been working in the slightest, ever since she lost her call to the dispatcher some hours ago. But to her surprise, as she glanced at the phone on the passenger seat, she saw a tiny "1" in a red dot on her phone app, showing that she had a voice message.

"My god, are you working now?" she asked, picking up the phone and punching the voice mail icon. She was shocked when it rang, and then connected her to her voicemail.

I must be in range of a tower that is still in service, she thought, as she pulled over to the side of the road.

She listened through the greeting, then punched the number to retrieve new messages. She expected to hear the voice of her dispatcher, or maybe her Sergeant. But the voice that came through the phone's speaker was the last one in the world she expected to hear.

She instantly recognized Michelle Kilani.

Dumbfounded, Carla listened to the message.

"Detective Grayson, this is Michelle Kilani. I have to make this quick, because we're leaving the city. Or at least, we're going to try to. But I need you to know what's going on. This isn't a virus, and it isn't a chemical leak. It's something much more terrible. And I know you're going to think I'm crazy, but please, just listen... When Howard killed Richard, he wasn't Howard. It's... It's too complicated to explain in detail, but just know that there are... presences..."