First Weeks After

by Jay Vielle

  “Jake?” I said, laying my hand gently on his shoulder. He nodded slightly.

  “I hear you Eddie,” he replied. “And I, I’m not sure just yet. I need to think.”

  “What you need to do is get your ass in gear,” said Tommy. Jake wheeled on him.

  “Watch it boy,” said Jake. “I know you think you know everything at age twenty, but you don’t. I’m not going off half-cocked and get us all killed, that’s for sure. Some planning needs to take place.”

  “What are you thinking?” I asked him. “I mean, we’re obviously going to D.C. That scene we saw on the news with Laura. That was on Constitution Avenue. Near the monuments. How we get in there is another matter.” Jake nodded at my statement, calming himself a little.

  “The military will block every road in. At least the major ones. Washington is a wheel with spokes. There are a lot of ways in, but they get convoluted, and many of them all meet at some point near the center. We’ve got to find a way to get around that,” he said.

  “You mean, like a detour?” I asked.

  “Something like that. Vinny, bring me the map book of Washington. It should be in the top middle drawer of my desk.” Vinny went to the desk to look for the book.

  “You know, apart from the Apocalypse happening, this would be one of those times when somebody from your generation would bust balls on old farts using maps instead of a cell phone,” I said, eyeballing Tommy. He was in perma-scowl mode and didn’t engage.

  “Seriously, Dad. Who uses maps these days?” asked Vinny, bringing the book.

  “Tried your cell phone directions lady recently, Vinny?” Jake asked smugly.

  “I know, I know. I was just kidding. For once, your old fart ways seem to serve you well,” said Vinny. Jake flipped from page to page. He went back and forth from the initial overview page, with a map of the entire metropolitan area, and then to the outer beltway areas.

  “Hard to tell where they are, but—hey! Well whaddaya think of that?” Jake muttered to himself.

  “What?” I asked. He grinned.

  “You think I’m old school now, boy,” Jake said to Vinny. “Things are about to get interesting.”

  “What do you mean, ‘interesting’?” I asked. “How much more interesting could things get from the week we all just spent with you?”

  “We need to get into a fortified city under Marshall law that has all of the roads blocked from traffic,” Jake said.

  “Yeah, so?” I asked. “We saw that the last time we tried to get in on Interstate 66 in Virginia. The tanks were four across on each road. We’d need to be General Patton to get past all those guys.”

  “Think more Lewis and Clark than General Patton,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Tommy.

  “Look here, on this map. The Anacostia River goes all the way up to Bladensburg. You can take a boat from the Bladensburg Water Park all the way down here, all the way to the Potomac. You could get right into the Capitol from there.”

  “Dad, we don’t own a boat,” said Tommy.

  “We’re going to borrow a few kayaks from the Bladensburg Water Park. I’m betting they haven’t had a lot of tourism lately, and kayaking isn’t the first thing that comes to mind during the Apocalypse.”

  I looked at the map a second. I had to admit it was a whacky and maybe brilliant idea. They wouldn’t check those thin waterways down there. Nobody really boated places in the city, at least not in the modern sense. Still, I saw a small problem.

  “Jake, Bladensburg is inside the beltway. They’re bound to have blocked most of those major roads into it. How can we get close enough to the Water Park? We can’t walk that far. It’s like 20 miles. We wouldn’t have enough energy to paddle in a circle, much less down to the Potomac,” I said.

  “Lewis and Clark, Eddie. Or maybe for you, more like Sacagawea,” he laughed. Jake loved giving me shit about being gay, or effeminate, or every other annoying toxically masculine comment someone might make—but I knew he never meant any of them. We had become good friends the last few years. Jake didn’t have a bigoted bone in his body, but you’d never know it from the shit he gave me constantly.

  “Okay, first of all, she was a fucking superhero,” I said. “She was like Ginger Rogers. You know how they say that every amazing thing that Fred Astaire did, Ginger Rogers did backwards in high heels? Well everything Lewis and Clark did, Sacagawea did pregnant. So, despite your trying to make it an insult, I’m flattered. But what are you talking about with all this?”

  “Look here, Eddie. Glenmont Park Stables. We ride to Bladensburg. Then we boat to the Capitol. See? Just like Lewis and Clark.”

  “We’re going to steal horses, right them twenty miles, then steal boats?” I asked.

  “Borrow. You make it sound so sinister. We’re going to borrow horses, ride them twenty miles, and then borrow some boats. We can find a spot to put the horses in by the water park. If they’re alive. Remember, it’s been a week. With all of the craziness, we don’t even know for sure if they’re alive, or if their owners are alive. We have no idea what we’re going to find,” he said.

  “But we’re going anyway,” said Tommy.

  “But we’re going anyway,” said Jake. “And we’re leaving in an hour. Get every backpack in this house and let’s start filling them with provisions. We have no idea how this is gonna go. Best be prepared. Tommy’s scowl lifted, and I almost thought I saw him smile at his dad. Jake patted him on the shoulder and nodded, and Tommy was off.

  “Um, Mr. Fisher,” said Morgan meekly from the corner of the living room. I admit, I had completely forgotten she was even there. “I’m not sure I’m up to this, “” she said. Estela, who was sitting next to her on the loveseat, put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Pero, Morgan,” said Estela. “You said you wanted to find your parents.”

  “I do, I mean, who doesn’t,” she said. “But you saw the tanks when we tried to go down the interstate. And Mr. Fisher is talking about some kind of mission with horses and boats, for crying out loud. I mean it sounds like some kind of Navy SEAL thing. It sounds like a movie. I can’t do all of that. I’m not some Army Ranger. I’m not even a tomboy. And even if we made it through, what then? It’s bad enough that we have to get into Washington, but now Vinny’s mom, good Lord! How can I ask this family to do anything for me, when they’ve got all of this to deal with? I don’t even know if my parents are alive. I could,” she choked off a sob. Estela hugged her.

  “Morgan,” I said. But I didn’t know what to say next. We had grabbed this girl from Virginia Tech where Vinny was going to school and told her we’d look for her parents. We almost got her violated and sold as a sex slave when we were captured by that group of criminals who had taken over the town of Front Royal. Then we hauled her north another hour and a half to Emmitsburg, Maryland because we had nowhere else to go. And I had forgotten about her. Seeing Laura Fisher as one of those things had made me. I still remembered my own parents, though, so I felt guilty about forgetting Morgan.

  “No, Mr. Reyes,” she said.

  “Eddie,” I corrected her. “I never taught you.”

  “Okay, Eddie, then. I know what you’re going to say. But I think I should sit this one out. I think Estela and I should stay here while you all go. We can hold down the fort, so to speak. Estela is going to need me, given what we just found out, and I know I’m going to need her. Why don’t you all go, and we can discuss my parents once you’ve seen what Washington is like, and solved the problems you all have already,” said Morgan.

  I just nodded. She was right. My own guilt made me want to put her needs up front, but the truth was we knew where my parents were, and we knew pretty much where Laura Fisher was. We didn’t even know if Morgan’s parents were alive or not, and we had no idea what Washington was going to be like, even if we managed to make it in using Jake’s cockamamie plan. And she obviously wasn’t up to the physical rigors of Jake’s plan. Hell, I’m not even sure I was, and I was
a marginal athlete at one point.

  She was also right about Estela needing her. We had found out just before driving here that Estela had essentially lied to all of us about her life. She had made up some tale about being born in Texas and sent to a deportation facility at a prison in California and having a girlfriend that the local college disapproved of and threatened with expulsion if she didn’t terminate the relationship due to their stance on homosexuality. The truth was she wasn’t deported, her father was from Spain, and the college had nothing to do with any of it. Her father, Pablo Fuentes, had been a professor at that college and had disowned her upon finding out that his daughter was a lesbian, and had effectively chased off the girlfriend himself by convincing her that her soul would burn in the flames of Hell if she didn’t repent and leave Estela. That whole story was insane, and one I really wanted to follow up on, just like the eventual search for Morgan’s parents. But it would have to wait, and Morgan’s offer to stay was one that was very welcome to my conscience.

  We all spent the next hour packing food that could last several days along with water bottles, and a few odd sundries like paper towels, knives, and tools with multiple uses. I got the tiny Swiss Army knife and suddenly felt like an outsider. I was a little nervous. I wasn’t the outdoorsy type really, and this mission we were on suddenly sounded a lot more like the Old West than the aftermath of World War III. Part of me was excited. Horses, boats, and terrain that I’d really only ever seen from either an automobile or a train window. Whenever the topic of Washington D.C. is brought up, people think of civilization. Museums, restaurants, monuments, politics, huge events, mass transportation. Nobody thinks of parks, rivers, woods, or animals. Well, unless you’re at the National Zoo. But mostly it is city life, city streets, city people. In a moment Jake had suddenly erased the most Washington-ish thing about Washington, and I was excited to get a look at it from a very different perspective.

  “Dad, what vehicle do we take?” asked Tommy. “Bus or truck?”

  “Truck,” answered Jake. “School busses are too conspicuous. We’re sneaking into a city. The truck will blend in better. Throw the stuff in the trunk.”

  “Trunk?” I asked. “I thought you just said we were taking a truck.”

  “We are. Have I ever showed you my Honda Ridgeline?” Jake asked. I shook my head and we all walked outside. Tommy opened up the tailgate in a way I had never seen before—sideways, like a regular gate to a corral or something.

  “What the hell?” I asked. Tommy smiled back and reached his hand underneath the bed of the truck. It made a popping sound, and half of the truck bed sprung upwards like a trap door.

  “Holy shit,” I said. “What the hell is this thing?”

  “Honda Ridgeline. I take a lot of shit about it all the time from my redneck buddies. They all drive giant Fords or Rams. Giant, massive things they are. They all make fun of my little Honda. Yet their trucks are twice the price and only two-wheel drive.”

  It sounded like a commercial to me, but Jake was actually into it.

  “Wait, this thing has four-wheel drive?” I asked.

  “Yup. All the time. And their trucks don’t have hidden trunk space, either,” he said.

  “And I have to say, that tailgate is cool. But doesn’t it make some stuff harder, opening sideways like that? I mean there’s gotta be times when you wish it would just open normal and flat, like if you needed more space back there, right?” I asked. Jake and Tommy smiled at each other. Tommy slammed the tailgate shut, then reached for a different latch, and the tailgate opened like every other tailgate I’d ever seen.

  “You’re fucking kidding me,” I said.

  “Told ya. It’s awesome. And it’s less expensive than one of those small-penis-compensation machines you see some of our colleagues driving,” said Jake.

  “Wait, doesn’t Wes Kent have one of those?” I asked.

  “Lou Orville too. Kinda makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” he said smiling. I nodded back.

  “Hop in, everyone. The cat’s got enough food for a week, the doors are locked. We’re ready to head south. We all hopped into Jake’s “little” Honda truck and had plenty of space for the five of us. Tommy took shotgun—an honor saved for the eldest son. That was probably for the best, given his prickly nature towards Wendy. She and Vinny could sit next to me in the back. I thought about those two guys that Jake and I talked about for a moment. West Kent and Lou Orville. Those were the guys who had run us all out of Hunter’s Run High School. They were the ones in that crazy-ass Church of the Many Blessings who had judged us not worthy enough to be among them in any way, and they had poisoned the minds of the people we were surviving with into thinking we were a danger to the entire group. In a way, they were largely responsible for all of the insanity we had endured the previous week. My anger rose just thinking about them. But I knew I had to put them out of my mind. They were the past. I had importance now. I was part of a team out to rescue people dear to us from a fate that only God could guess at. Just how we were going to make that happen was a mystery into which we had taken our first steps.

  CHAPTER 2

  “The nerve, the nerve of that guy,” said Wes Kent. “He actually came back here.” Mark Longaberger literally bit his lip and looked at the floor.

  “He sure as shit did,” said Lou Orville. “And he was none too happy about you giving his room away,” he said laughing.

  “Actually,” Mark corrected him, “he didn’t seem to care that much about the room thing. It was Maureen Kelly, Al DePhillipo, and Eddie Reyes who complained the loudest. They were legitimately pissed,” he added.

  “Then they shouldn’t have left,” said Wes. “Face it, they wouldn’t have like it here anyway. We’re not their kind of people. We’re building something here. They just like to tear things down.”

  “Yeah,” added Lou.

  “What were they tearing down again?” asked Mark.

  “Us. Our establishments. Normal American behavior and speech. Everything I say is either homophobic this or racist that. They look for arguments in just about everything. I’m sick of it,” Wes said. “I’m a good Christian doing good works for people. I don’t want to hear about how horrible a person I am.”

  “Nobody does,” said Lou. Mark just nodded and looked at the floor.

  “You’re not going soft, are you Mark?” asked Lou.

  “Soft?” asked Mark.

  “You know, like those…homos,” he said.

  “Those ‘homos’?” asked Mark again.

  “Like those people we’re talking about. You’re not becoming like them, are you?” asked Lou. Wes turned to look with added curiosity. “You’ve had a lot to say lately, you know?”

  “First of all, there’s a lot wrong with that question,” said Mark. “Of all of ‘those people’ you’re talking about, only one is a ‘homo,’ and that’s Eddie Reyes. Maureen and Al are actually dating.”

  “Really? I never knew that,” said Lou. Wes raised an eyebrow.

  “They didn’t tell many people at first. Didn’t want to have to deal with school gossip,” Mark said.

  “And secondly, just because I clarify some of the idiocy that comes out of your mouth doesn’t make me soft, or one of them, or gay, or one of anybody. It makes me—me. Myself. I have opinions, usually based on education. I don’t just blithely bop along to the same tune everyone around me is singing,” said Mark.

  Wes Kent cleared his throat.

  “And there’s nothing wrong with that, Wes,” Father Joe chimed it unexpectedly. He had walked up without being noticed and stood behind Wed.

  “No, of course not,” said Wes. “I never said there was. Mark is entitled to his opinions. As are we all, right Padre?”

  “Right indeed,” said Father Joe. “The spirit speaks to all of us differently.” Mark smiled and nodded back a silent thank you to Father Joe, who smiled back.

  “Now then, lads,” said Father Joe. “I have a project for you. I want to have a service.”
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br />   “Okay. How can we help? The church is all set up, isn’t it?” asked Wes.

  “Of course. But I want this service outside. The weather is lovely, and I’d like to utilize that,” said Father Joe.

  “That means a lot of chair moving, doesn’t it?” asked Lou Orville, anticipating his fate.

  “Ordinarily, yes,” said Father Joe. “But this one I’d like to have on your football field.” Lou beamed. Wes raised an eyebrow.

  “Not going to be a problem. I’m all for it. What’s the thought on that?” said Wes.

  “The football field has ten times the seating that the church does. I’d like to invite the entire town,” he answered.

  “Wow. I like your moxie, Padre,” said Wes. “And we can get the propaganda machine going, I suppose. Drive around with the megaphone, put a sign out on the church marquee, even print up leaflets to post up, all the usual stuff for our bigger events. But even with the cookout we had a few days ago, we only got so many new prospective members. How do you figure we’re going to have enough to fill a football stadium?” asked Wes.

  “Well, first, we need to change the focus. I suppose this is less of a ‘service’ and more of a ‘meeting,’ if you get my meaning,” said the pastor.

  “Okay. Meeting. Better I suppose. But it’s still only going to bring so many in,” said Wes.

  “This meeting is going to be mandatory,” said Father Joe.

  “Mandatory? How are you going to make it mandatory?” asked Wes.

  “Because we are going to declare it so,” said Father Joe. Wes grinned at that.

  “What gives us the right to make it mandatory,” asked Lou.

  “What gives anyone the right?” asked Father Joe. “If the municipal government called it, would we be forced to attend, or is it our American right to abstain? If the state or federal government did the same, wouldn’t we be able to come or go? That means that it isn’t so much the right to declare it mandatory that’s the issue. It’s the right to enforce it,” said Father Joe.