Free The Oasis of Filth by Keith Soares Page A

gate blocking the road rolled open. For a brief moment, I thought I had just traded one walled city for another, and wondered why. I felt a moment of fear. It wouldn’t be the last.
     
    “You’d be better off driving up,” Caroline said, looking at Rosa’s bandages. I nodded. Caroline and two others climbed into a pickup truck just inside the gate. It was the first time we’d seen another moving vehicle on our trip. The oddness of it struck me.
     
    Back in the RV, it seemed almost like a victory lap — one last moment in our home on wheels. I hoped it wasn’t a last moment for Rosa entirely.
     
    At the end of a small spit of land jutting into the lake, the road blossomed into a wide, sweeping loop. Inside the loop a huge building loomed, austere brick with wide, white-paned windows opening on the lake. Additional smaller buildings, similar in style, with brick and large windows, stretched off to the side, and there were even tennis courts and a pool. I felt like I was in a dream, seeing the way they lived out here in the wild. Around the grounds, individual homes made neat rows; these had the appearance of being built more recently. Outside the looping drive, tents appeared scattered through the woods. I assumed we weren’t the only stragglers to find our way here. There was a parking lot at the end of the road. Several well-maintained cars and trucks were parked there, but many spaces remained open. The pickup parked in one of them. Caroline guided us into another space, and she and her friends helped Rosa out of the RV. Together we all walked to the large main building.
     
    It was called the Hickory Knob State Park Lodge, and we were told it offered 76 rooms and its own restaurant. The restaurant was bustling as we walked in, although people turned and stared at our unfamiliar faces. My first impression of the building being a huge home for one important family — heightened by the sense that we were being taken to their leader — was way off. This was more commune than palace.
     
    Nevertheless, we were taken to their leader, Harvey. He was an older, rather disheveled man, with a comb-over hairstyle to hide his mostly bald head. Ten years into the disease, and small vanities still prevailed. His natural posture seemed to be a sort of half-stoop, accented by a heavy-set build and sloppy, rumpled clothes. He stood up from a tiny, plain desk in the small office behind the lobby counter, walked over to us, and put out his hand. “I’m Harvey,” was all he said.
     
    The place was... well, it was filthy. We had grown used to a certain amount of unclean on the road, but still held ourselves to the sterile standards of the city. Stay clean, stay alive. But not here. If this was The Oasis, it was The Oasis of Filth. I was stunned. Rosa seemed too ill to care, but I saw it. It was so different from our lives behind the wall, even from our lives in the RV, that it was shocking. Things were not pristine. Things were not scoured clean. Had we just traveled hundreds of miles, risked everything, only to expose ourselves to the disease here? But these people. They looked healthy, even happy. How did they do it? They must have some answer.
     
    “We need your help,” I said.
     
    “Hold on, now. Where’re you from?” Harvey cocked his head.
     
    “She’s been infected.”
     
    I swear he rolled his eyes. “I know. Where are you from?”
     
    “DC. Come on! She’s infected!”
     
    “And you brought her here anyway?” Harvey asked.
     
    What else could I say? “I thought The Oasis was her only hope.”
     
    “You were probably right. And stupid as hell.” Harvey was crass, but seemed to be very smart. I stared at him. Was this wise, or the stupidest thing I’d ever do?
     
    “Help her,” I finally said, tilting my head down as a wave of exhaustion set in. His eyebrows raised.
     
    “You think we can help her?” he asked, eyeing Rosa’s condition, her bandages tinted