After the Day

by Matthew Gilman

  Two streets away he heard it. First it was the humming, then the voices. It was English and several different voices. He pushed himself against the side of the house and tried to hide. He ran around to the back and peeked around the side to see who was coming. One man strolled into the middle of the road. He was dressed in green camouflage and holding an AR-15 rifle. His boots looked new and he wore a vest with extra magazines on it for the rifle. On the man’s arm was the symbol that Amir was afraid of. The red cross with a blue rectangle background. It was the Christian army that had been cleansing the area of heathens.

  Amir heard the door in front of the house being kicked in. Through the windows he could hear the footsteps traveling towards him. He looked behind and saw the back porch. He crawled under it and waited. If anyone came around the side of the house they would see him. He hoped Allah would forgive him for not praying as he should.

  The back door flew open and a pair of boots stood above Amir less than a foot from his face. He looked up holding his breath and watching the man scan the backyard. There was the static of a radio.

  “Yeah it’s clear back here,” the man said, followed by more static. “We may want to come back to this house there were some supplies that I spotted, over.” Static followed.

  The man entered the house and closed the door. Amir waited to hear the front door close before he crawled out from under the porch. He was only two streets over from Fatima and it felt like he was waiting forever to get back to her. Amir crossed the backyards creating a distance between himself and the group on the street. At one point he could see the pickup truck that slowly traveled down the street. There were about a dozen men and they all took turns kicking in doors and carrying supplies out. Amir looked at the food piled in the back and felt desperate. He looked at his rifle and wondered if he could somehow kill these men and take the food. He could get the truck and drive it to the east coast and trade it for a trip back home. It was fantasy. He hid until the group was further down the street before he crossed the road back to Fatima.

  Fatima piled the fire wood next to the fire place and walked back into the kitchen. She wanted to have a dinner ready for Amir when he returned. She looked at the cans and thought about what would go good together. She looked through the pots and pans to see what would work best to cook in. Then she heard the door open. She turned around expecting to see Amir walking through the door. Instead she saw a white man in a camouflage uniform holding a black assault rifle at her. He was young, early twenties, with blonde hair and bright blue eyes. He said nothing as he pointed the rifle at her. She kept still and slowly moved her hand to the knife on her belt. She didn’t know what to do with it once she had it. He lifted the rifle higher and jabbed it at her. Her hand went back down to her sides. She thought this was the end, she would finally see her sons again.

  The radio on the man’s belt hollered at him. He lowered the rifle still aiming it.

  “House is clear, nothing here, over.” he said. He looked at her and backed out of the house. He pointed at her and then down to the floor. It was his way of telling her to hide in the basement. Once he was out the door she ran into the kitchen, grabbed some food and her bag and ran down into the pitch black of the basement. She didn’t know how long she would have to stay there. She thought for sure Amir had been caught.

  She sat in the silence of the basement where time no longer existed.

  Chapter 7: Three years after the Day

  Bruce and Aurora had been traveling only a few days before they came across other people. He wanted to believe they were friendly but stayed cautious. They stayed away and watched for days. Hiding in the bushes and tall grass they viewed from a distance the people they had sought out. They appeared normal for the most part. Hanging laundry on lines to dry, cooking over an open fire, and sleeping in tents. So far they appeared to be exactly what he had hoped, civilized.

  He thought they would watch for a week and then decide if they would make contact. Things were looking good. He thought it would be harder to find people to have Aurora meet. He was excited about giving her a family that she could be around.

  On the sixth day he sat in the tall grass on a hill overlooking the camp. Aurora, by his side, was sleeping. He had been wondering where they got their food from. Malnutrition did not appear to be a problem. They sat around the fire with large portions of food and laughed and joked. In his loneliness he had considered walking down and introducing himself and Aurora. He had a hard time arguing against this choice and yet his mind stayed on the task at hand.

  A group had left the camp that morning with rifles and other hunting gear. They appeared to have run low on food and set out to replenish their stash. He thought they would return with deer or other small game. The sun was setting when the hunters returned, their catch tied to long sticks and carried in groups of two. The first group carried a woman, the second a man, and the third carried another man.

  He broke down. Quietly crying he balled up and held his frustration in. He wiped his tears away and stayed close to the ground. Turning around he awoke Aurora and held his hand over her mouth. This was not the first time she had awoken this way. She was not startled. Instead she spoke in a whisper.

  “Are they bad people?” she asked.

  “Yes, we need to leave. Stay close to the ground.” He said.

  She rolled onto her belly and started to move to the opposite side of the hill. He turned around and caught a glimpse of the camp. A man, one of the hunters, walked up to a man still hanging by his limbs on a branch. Taking out a knife he pulled the man’s head down exposing the neck and sliced the neck open bleeding him out through the jugulars. He turned around to look away as the hunter walked up the next hanging victim.

  Rushing down the hill they had little time to get away as the sun set on the horizon. Aurora stayed by his side the whole time. An entire week blown on a lost cause. He felt disappointment in the loss of a new home. He couldn’t figure out how they could be so normal and yet do the things that they did.

  They ran until they could no longer see the ground. He tripped and decided to call it a night. Looking in the rising moonlight he saw an oak tree partially hollowed out with a shadow. They had their bags and he made a small nest for them to huddle in for the night. A cushion of leaves and the foam sleeping pads from their bags created a bed of air to keep their bodies warmer and off the ground.

  He crawled in first and Aurora curled up in his lap. Putting a hat on and pulling the sleeping bag over them Aurora quickly fell asleep. He couldn’t sleep though. He listened in the night. He heard all kinds of noises in the dark. Sometimes the smallest of animals would make the most noise. He could tell when deer were walking around and the heavy breathing when they smelled something. The scraping of claws on tree bark as raccoons and opossum came out from their daytime slumber and moved about in search of leftovers. This isn’t the first time he spent a night out in the woods, every time felt like the first time. He didn’t know how Aurora was able to sleep. He thought it was the idea of his protection. He hadn’t done much but keep an eye on her and treat her like she was his own. Maybe that was enough. He worried that one day they might meet someone in her family and they would take her away. The odds after the flu a few years back were slim. Between that and the famine the odds they would ever meet someone either of them knew were slim.

  At some point he must have dozed off and awoke to light in his eyes and an old woman standing over him with a shotgun pointed at his head. He looked around and remembered how they had gotten to this spot but never realized they had set up camp a hundred feet behind a farm house.

  “You one of them people eaters?” The old woman asked with the hint of a southern accent.

  He shook his head and slowly pulled the sleeping bag down showing Aurora’s still sleeping face. The old woman aimed the shotgun up and stood in shock, the look of aggression was gone and instead she could not keep her eyes off the little girl.

  “You spent the night out here?”
The old lady asked.

  He nodded and she moved her feet around as if trying to figure out what to do first.

  “Well, don’t just sit there. Come inside.” She turned around and started walking to the house.

  Lightly shaking Aurora awake he started rolling the bag up, then the padding and decided to put them back on the packs after they went into the house. If the woman was going to kill them she would have done it without waking them up.

  Walking through the screen door everything looked like a normal kitchen. With the addition of herbs hanging from the ceiling things looked normal here. It was like old times.

  “Aurora, you can sit at the table.” She stayed quiet and shy as the old woman walked in. He was able to get a better look at her without the shotgun muzzle blocking his view.

  “Oh where are my manners, would you like something to drink?” She asked as she rummaged around the cupboards. They were filled with cans and boxes of food. He didn’t know if she had bought them before the world went to hell or scavenged them later. “Would you like some tea?”

  “That would be nice.” He said as he took a seat at the kitchen table next to Aurora.

  “Oh, oh, even better, we can have breakfast. Doesn’t that sound lovely?” He was glad to see the happy look in her eyes as she ran around the kitchen looking for items to put together for their meal. Pancake mix and maple syrup in a mason jar sat on the counter. Stomping down to the basement and back up she had a handful of smoked and cured bacon in her hands.

  “Is that… is that bacon?” He asked excited. It had been three years since seeing bacon that wasn’t on a pig in a farm with an angry farmer that was still alive and willing to shoot anybody to protect it.

  “Sure is, butchered it myself. Been doing this for years. Me and my husband started this homestead twenty years ago after the kids left. Been doing a lot of this ourselves. Well until he passed from the flu. He had everything you could think of. Even the flu medicine that always worked. I don’t know how I didn’t get it taking care of him. But all the food and everything was still here. I kept hoping the kids would come back and bring their families but none of them did. Just been me and a few travelers. Most don’t stay because they are looking for someone or trying to get home. You looking for anyone?”

  He thought for a moment.

  “No one in particular. She wanted to meet other people. Only ones we found besides you are the cannibals a few miles from here. I guess you know about them from what you said.”

  “Yeah, they came here trying to steal food and what not, hell a few times they tried to get me until I sent them home with some of their own to eat.”

  Aurora looked up at the woman, then him, wondering what was just said.

  “Oh dear, it’s ok. We’re just talking about bad people. Nothing for you to worry about.” The old woman added. She looked at Bruce for his approval at still having her skills of lying to children for their own good. He rarely used it and found it more beneficial to tell Aurora the truth whenever possible to help her survive. He was sad to think it but there was no such thing as a childhood anymore.

  The old woman turned around and started slicing the bacon into thin strips.

  “My name is Norah by the way.” She left the end of the sentence open for him.

  “I am Bruce and this is Aurora.” He said.

  “Hi,” Aurora said in a slight whimper still acting shy.

  Norah sliced the bacon until there was nothing left but thin slabs ready for the frying pan. Bruce didn’t notice before but the stove was an old wood burning model and Norah simply placed the pan on the burner and then added the bacon. The crackle and popping noise brought back memories that Bruce had not thought of in years. His mother cooking breakfast on Sunday mornings, going to the diner for breakfast before work, or the years he worked in a restaurant while he was in college. The salty smell in the air made his mouth water and he wondered if he could ever repay this woman for the meal.

  As the bacon cooked Norah grabbed the box of pancake mix and added some water from a jug she had on the counter. Scraping it around the bowl she mixed everything until it was thick and fluffed with air.

  “The maple syrup is one thing we really got right around here.” She said stirring the pancake mix.

  “I have to say we never noticed when the power went out. It was a couple of days I guess, that’s when Bill, my husband, tried to make a phone call to order some supplies from town and the line was dead. We thought a line went down somewhere and it hadn’t been fixed yet. So he drove into town and found that most of the shops were closed. He picked up a newspaper from a machine and found out the world had gone to hell. Had a big picture of D.C. in a mushroom cloud on the cover. Figured it was them Russians. They always hated us. Then all kinds of things happened. The power, banks never opened back up, no more food was delivered to town. We bought what we could and stayed home. We already had plenty of food here but there are things we can’t make ourselves. Like the pancakes. Never did find a recipe for that. Things are always important in hind sight.”

  “Sounds like you were better off than most.” Bruce added trying to make her feel better about her choices.

  “We were. I’m glad for that. Wish others would have tried harder to protect themselves. Hope my kids did that.”

  “If your cooking is any indication, your kids are fine.” Bruce added looking at the skillet.

  She smiled, her face full of wrinkles. She must have lived a happy life and for her it seemed to have continued. She placed the cooked bacon onto a serving tray and replaced the empty spots in the pan with new slices. In a separate nonstick pan she added the pancake batter and started the pancakes.

  That afternoon Norah took Bruce and Aurora around the farm. Norah didn’t have any large live stock. Chickens and some pigs. The pigs were more for free compost and fertilizer. When she did butcher them it was a long ordeal and during the winter months when she could simply store it outside and not worry about it rotting. Much of the pig she would smoke, other parts she would encase in salt.

  “My husband would buy salt by the case. I never understood it. He would tell me that salt was once worth its weight in gold and that one day it would be there again. I never thought it would come true in my lifetime. He would love to have been here to hear me say that.” Norah talked about her husband a lot during the tour.

  Bruce watched Aurora run around with the chickens and try to pick them up. There were a few dozen and all different colors and styles of feathers. He didn’t know what they were.

  “Do you butcher your chickens?” Bruce asked.

  “No. They are more valuable for the eggs. Even with you two I have more eggs than I need. The only reason I butcher the hogs is because if I don’t I won’t have enough food to feed them and I have a way of preserving it. It’s time consuming but in the end its better for both of us.”

  Norah took Bruce and Aurora through the fields where they learned about blueberries, raspberries, and the various crops Norah kept in her garden. She also had grain fields that she said she wanted to leave the soil rich in case she was able to start producing large crops again.

  “The buckwheat is a great fertilizer and it keeps the weeds out. Plus the seed is a great grain for all kinds of recipes.”

  Bruce was ignorant about farming, it sounded like a lot of work. He learned at the beginning of the collapse that life without modern equipment was a lot of work. Something about the farm gave him a good feeling. It was work that he could take pride in. Everything he would be doing was for a purpose and he would see the benefits that everyone would enjoy. Hard work is fine, if it’s worth it.

  After the tour Norah took Aurora and Bruce into the house and showed them the spare bedrooms. The final show of trust was the shotgun over the fireplace. Norah showed Bruce where the ammo was kept and how to work the old double barrel.

  “If you’re going to stay here I think it’s for everyone’s safety that you know where this is and how to use it.”

>   Bruce wondered if it was early for her to show such trust but the fact they were in the house was a huge show of faith. After Norah showed him the gun she said he may have to use it to protect Aurora one day. That was the giveaway for her trust in him. No man in this world would travel around with a little girl unless he had a good heart. When the little girl turned out not to be his it only showed how good of a person he was. Protecting your own child was one thing, something that could not be questioned. For a man to protect someone else’s child without any commitment other than it was the right thing to do, this was something unheard of in this new self-serving world.

  For Norah, to see a man that loved a child to protect it in this world was a new sign of hope that she didn’t think she would ever see again.

  “The two of you can feel free to call this your home if you wish.” Norah said as she went to her bedroom. Bruce was sure that this wise old woman had more than one form of protection in the house. He wasn’t concerned about it. He wasn’t planning on doing harm to her. She most likely saved their lives. He was thankful for a new life and a home for Aurora to have the most normal life he could offer her.

  Chapter 8: Three years after the Day

  John walked back to the truck and waved it forward to the next house. He thought about the woman that he saw in the house. She was dirty and small, but beautiful. She had large dark eyes, thick black hair, and thick lips. Her tan skin he imagines was smooth and silky. Her heavy breast and shapely legs caught his attention. He didn’t know that Muslim women could wear clothes like that. At the camp they were shown images of women covered under black sheets and hidden from view. They were told it was because of how hideous they were. Even their men didn’t want to see them.

  She reminded him of a movie he watched as a child. A thief with a flying carpet and a pet monkey. But the princess was who she reminded him of. As a child he thought she was pretty, a cartoon, but the woman in the house was the real thing, a Persian princess.