Season 1 Episode 10: The VNC

Some of our most admirable human qualities, care and trust, can also be our downfall. How many times must Will learn that when you allow yourself to trust, you not only risk your own survival, you endanger those you love? In the savagery of the post-viral landscape, only two types of people escape: the quick and the dead.

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Transcript

After the Virus, Season 1 Episode 10

Well pat yourself on the back, you’ve made it to the tenth episode! I’d estimate that there are between 25 and 30 episodes in Season 1 … and I’ve already started working on the sequel!

In episode 9 Will and Hope moved into Mill Creek Canyon. Prior to the mass immigration of white settlers across the Lassen trail beginning in 1848 and the subsequent settlement of the northern California Great Valley, the Yahi people, the southernmost band of the Yana tribe lived in blissful isolation in both the Deer Creek and Mill Creek drainages. By the 1870’s the tribe had been nearly exterminated by cattle ranchers and indian hunters in both canyons. Today, a highway paralells much of upper Deer Creek canyon, but Mill Creek canyon is still isolated, with only one dirt road and bridge crossing it in more than 40 miles.

It took me an hour to catch up to them. From the top of the high bank on my side of the creek I could just make out one of the men washing himself at the water's edge. I was creeping closer to get a view of the second man, when I was surprised from behind. The second man had snuck up behind me and wrapped his arm around my neck as he grasped at the pistol tucked in my belt. I struggled for a moment then realized it was too late - he had my gun and told me to keep still. He backed up a few paces with the gun trained on me and my hands went up.

The next thing that happened was amazing. A voice rang out from behind a rock above the man, telling him to drop the gun or die. I could just see the barrel of the gun pointed at him and we both heard the lever jack a round into the chamber. It was brave young Hope! She had decided to follow me from a distance and I was glad she did! The man seemed confused about what to do so I added, “She means it,” at which point the man lost all his nerve and placed the gun on the ground.

I picked up the gun and told the man to call down for his friend to join us. Hope and I held up our guns for the man at the creek to see and he picked up his stuff and crossed the creek towards us.

With both of our guns trained on the men we finally got a good look at them. They both had thick, matted beards, and although they had cleaned off some of the blood since we had seen them earlier, they were still bruised and scratched, and their clothes were tattered. Their hair was wild as though it hadn’t been combed or washed in weeks.

I asked them who they were and what they were doing here. The man who had attacked me did most of the talking - he said his name was Billy and the other man was his brother, Dusty. They were fleeing from a bombing raid in the valley.

Then I asked him the question that was troubling me most: why was he not afraid to touch me - how did he know that I wouldn’t infect him?

“You’re alive aren’t you,” he said smugly, “so that means you can only be VNC like us.”

“What the hell is VNC?” I demanded.

They looked at each other and laughed. “You don’t know what VNC is? You musta’ been up here for a looong time! VNC is military speak for VIRAL NON COMPROMISED. Once the majority of the population died off it was clear that a small portion of the population, about 1 percent, is immune to the disease.”

“Early on the military, as well as some para-military groups, had successfully quarantined themselves in various locations - no one knows how many - then they began an extermination campaign of anyone outside of the quarantine zone. It was believed, but never proven, that those outside of the quarantine zone were not only immune, but were carriers of the disease. The military took to calling us the VNC, cause it sounded kind of like the name they used for Vietnamese guerillas in that war. Every day for months they sent out spotter planes and gunships looking for VNC to exterminate. Those of us still alive went underground, sometimes literally, living off looted food and by our wits, scavenging or making what we needed…we took to calling ourselves “sur-viralists.”

“In the last month the military seemed to be weakening, or losing manpower - perhaps the disease made it into the quarantine zone. It seemed that their force got all split up with no apparent leadership or real strategy. We were living with a few others in a small band of surviralists, rotating between a series of safe-houses. From time to time we would bump into others who indicated that they were part of other, similar groups.”

“Just when we were beginning to feel a little safer, a bombing campaign began. These were much larger bombs then anything they had used on us to date - could you hear them from here? They made giant clouds. They obliterated entire blocks just to get at the few of us. It was overkill for sure, but luckily they had no clear idea where we actually were - they bombed randomly, perhaps killing a few of us but mostly just scattering us again, breaking up our little tribes.”

“Dusty and I were already hiding in a farmhouse near the foothills. Once we saw the big-ass bombs, we grabbed what we could and headed up this creek. We did a pretty good job of surviving on canned food and some stray cows. I’m not sure what we’re going to do here once the food in our pack runs out.”

With that he held up his hands as though to show that he was done and that he was at our mercy - his brother, who had said nothing the whole time, haltingly did the same.

I was torn between being pissed that he had held a gun on me and feeling compassion for the hard times they had been through, and the hard times to come for two unequipped to survive in the wild. I wasn’t about to give up too much about us or what we did and didn’t have - they knew we had two guns, that’s all they needed to know for now. On the other hand, they were humans and we were starved for human interaction. 

I told them to sit on their hands while I conferred with Hope, out of earshot. Hope was not pleased with the idea of doing anything to help these men, she didn’t trust them. But after laying out my reasoning, she slowly became more receptive. We worked out a plan and then I told the men that if they wanted some help we would visit them daily (if they were camping nearby) and teach them some survival skills as we were going about our own tasks, but we would not kill their game for them, and they were not to follow us at night. Billy agreed and Dusty nodded. 

It was midday…the first lesson was how to catch fish. We showed them a variety of ways, from soaproot stunning to fish tickling (reaching under overhanging ledges to find sleeping fish) to spearing. In the late afternoon I showed them how to make and use a bow drill to make fire, and we each cooked the fish that we had caught, then Hope and I left them to return to our cave.

July 22

When we arrived at their camp the next morning they were blistering their hands trying to start a morning fire with the bow drill, it takes much practice before one can reliably make fire. 

We showed them some loop snares, twitch up traps and deadfall traps for catching larger animals then left the traps set and went to the creek to work on baskets. Hope showed them how to weave a loose basket of cattail leaves while I showed them how to make a tightly woven basket using redbud and grasses. 

Checked our snares in the afternoon and had a single gray squirrel. After eight or nine tries, they started their own fire and skewered their squirrel, and we left to our cave to eat our own meal. 

July 23

They had caught a gray fox in their deadfall trap and were skinning it when we arrived. They have clearly never been taught how to skin an animal, as they were hacking it up trying. I coached surly Dusty as Billy and Hope watched. The skin was set aside with yesterday’s squirrel skin for later fleshing. I talked Dusty through the gutting and butchering, then explained how to jerk any meat they couldn’t eat right away. They cooked and ate a rear quarter and ribs over a midday fire, then jerked the rest. Neither looked too thrilled with the taste of dog, but did not complain. 

In the afternoon we gathered supplies for bow and arrow making, which we will work on tomorrow. 

July 24

Spent the afternoon helping them to make a bow and arrows, took the entire day for one bow, six arrows and six arrowheads - tomorrow we will practice shooting. 

July 26

Both Billy and Dusty take turns shooting and after a few hours can reliably hit a tree trunk at 10 yards...lots more practice to go. 

Hope and I take our bows and Billy takes their bow and we go hunting. Billy just misses a quail at about 7 yards. A half hour later we come upon another covey and Hope shoots one. 

Checking some snares on the way back we have caught a cottontail. Hope and I split the quail while Billy and Dusty split the rabbit. We sit around their fire and talk about the past before the virus. Billy had been a store clerk while Dusty had been a truck driver. They had lived their whole lives just 75 miles from here, but didn’t give too much detail. Hope kept quiet and let me give a brief, highly edited version of our pasts. We retreated to our cave well after dark. 

July 27

Is there not another decent, trustworthy human left alive on this earth?

This morning we split up. Billy and I went hunting while Dusty and Hope fleshed and tied hides. I had uncharacteristically left my pistol in the cave. We were hunting along the creek about a mile from their camp. It was warm and I was thirsty, so I knelt by the water’s edge to scoop up a drink when I caught movement right above me in the water’s reflection. I had just enough time to move my head abruptly right when a softball sized rock caught me on the ear tearing it half off. I rolled to the right to get away from my assailant and saw that it was Billy, who was now frantically attempting to knock an arrow, presumably to shoot me! The only thing within my reach was my own bow, and grabbing it as I rolled, I swung with all of my might into his shin. The force of the blow shattered my bow but had the desired effect - bringing him to his knees in pain. 

With hot blood flowing down my neck, I leapt up and swung the remaining half of my bow stock at his face which was now at my waist level. The arcing blow caught him squarely on the side of his jaw, knocking him to the ground unconscious, and likely with a broken jaw and teeth. 

My first thought was, “What the hell just happened?” My second thought was, “Hope.” 

Yanking off Billy’s shoes to keep him from following me if he regained consciousness, I threw them in the creek and began running to their camp wiping the blood from my neck as I ran. I thought of the surly, silent Dusty and cursed myself for my carelessness. 

As I approached the site I could hear anguished screams…clearly my worst fears had been realized. The scene that I came upon was grisly. There among their scattered packs and supplies lay Dusty, one hand shielding the holes that had recently held his eyes, the other hand cradling his crotch. Three small arrows stuck out of him at odd angles giving him the appearance of a pincushion as he wailed and moaned. Ten feet away stood Hope, another arrow ready to go. Tears rolled down her cheeks and yet she flashed a quick smile at me.

According to Hope, she had been showing him how to flesh a chunk of meat and fat from the fox pelt. Suddenly she felt his hands on her hips and he pulled her towards him. Instead of reacting immediately she allowed him to turn her around towards him, then like lightning she employed one of the most effective self-defense moves known - her agile hand accurately thrust a narrow finger into each eye. As the injured man stumbled backwards, she timed her kick perfectly so that the whip of her leg reached its full extension at the point where the bridge of her foot met the completely unprotected softness of his testicles. As he lay on the ground screaming she calmly retrieved her bow and arrows and sunk three of them into him in non-vital areas - thigh, triceps, buttocks - a cathartic action for her that kept him too preoccupied with pain to consider anything other than just writhing. 

I ran to her and hugged her and she melted into me sobbing. Then she noticed the blood on my neck and shirt, sobered up and escorted me to the creek to wash my wound. As we had no needles for stitching it, after washing thoroughly we immobilized it with a bandana around my head. 

As soon as my ear was stabilized, we turned our attention back to the two traitors. Although there was little chance that Dusty was going anywhere, we bound him with his arms behind his back, tied to his ankles. Once completely satisfied he could not escape, I went back to retrieve Billy. 

Up until this point, I had not even had time to be angry…I just reacted to each event as it unfolded. But when I saw Billy unconscious and the remains of my bow on the ground next to him, the blood pumping through my veins throbbed in my injured ear. 

I pulled my canteen from my pack and poured the contents on his face. He woke up, sputtering and moaning through a mouth constricted by a swollen jaw. In my rage I screamed at him, “Why?!”

“We can’t do this on our own,” he mumbled through swollen lips. “We needed your guns, your supplies, and the girl.”

I grabbed him roughly and lifted him to his feet. He screamed and fell down, claiming his leg was broken. I told him to walk or be dragged. He asked for a walking stick so I cut off a pine sapling, trimmed off the branches and gave it to him, walking behind him all the way. 

When we got back to their camp, Dusty was sitting up, blood seeping from his swollen eyelids. He was busy trying to remove one of the arrows with his tied hands. Hope was still standing where I’d left her. 

Hope and I consulted and decided what to do with them - nothing. They would get no more assistance from us. They would be left to fend for themselves…maybe they’d learned enough to get by. They were both injured, but not fatally. They had very little food. Billy would have to try to find his boots that I threw in the creek.

We told them that if we saw them again, we would shoot them on sight and told them they’d better put distance between themselves and us in a hurry. 

We went back to the cave where Hope again cleaned my ear and modified a fish hook to stitch it to my head. Then we talked through the events of the dreadful day.