by Kyle Kenze
“Hard to shoot off shotguns without people knowing you're out there,” Madison said. “And that's the first time we've heard them. So, yeah, they've been trying to keep real quiet.”
My bicep throbbed. A minor nuisance in the scheme of things. What really bothered me about my shirtless torso was something else entirely.
The scars on your body are a record of your life. And my scars had changed.
Changed, hell. They'd vanished.
My strong, well-muscled chest was thick with muscle and unbroken fur. There were no scabs or scars, no memento of any bullet blast through the heart. There were no four long stripes, the souvenir of hand-to-hand combat with a mountain lion on a rampage.
That stuff didn't happen. My body would remember if it had.
And yet my brain continued to insist.
Closing my eyes, I flashed back to the so-called memory of being shot through the heart only to wake in the cathedral turned movie set turned hospital.
No heart could have kept pumping through such an injury.
No gaping chest wound of that size could have closed up and healed over. And, if by some miracle, some unseen doctor somewhere had saved me, the shooting would have left a permanent scar.
There wasn't any other world. This was it. My foolish denial of the reality right in front of me was a threat to our very existence. When you died, you died. There wasn't any reset button. And I'd put my girls in real danger by wandering off in search of one.
But what about Red? Where did she come from? Didn't she say...?
I grasped Red's arm and tilted her small chin up to force her to look directly into my eyes. “Tell them what you told me. About your bunker, about your Army General. About how all this is a virtual reality that you and people like you helped design.”
“I have no idea what you think I told you.” Her green eyes never blinked. “You've asked me this before, and my answer is still the same.”
So I'd imagined that entire conversation. No wonder I felt so shaky about the borderline between reality and fantasy.
No more doubt. No more kidding myself about what we faced out here. If I died, I winked out of existence, never to wake up again. My girls would be left alone, without a man to help them rebuild the world.
My baby would be left without a father.
And that just couldn't be allowed to happen.
There was a reason Saunderson hired a man instead of purchasing a test tube full of sperm. The future needed a man's strength and a man's leadership. Without that, humanity didn't stand a chance.
My girls needed me here. The world needed me.
No more denial.
My duty was a weight, but it was mine to carry.
Chapter Six
Later, we relaxed around the fire. It was night again. Which night? None of us knew, not without our phones and calendars and clocks. I wasn't the only one who'd been losing track of time.
The damage to my shoulder was minor. We could hang out and rest for a couple of days, but I refused to loiter in a tangle of sleeping bags and long bare legs for longer than that.
“August won't last forever,” I said. “Especially not at altitude. Even if it did, even if the climate has changed that much as a result of whatever, we would still need a safer, more permanent place that we can defend against potential hostiles. We've got the height advantage here, but that's all we've got. We need a hardened bunker.”
“Agreed.” Madison's voice was crisp.
“Yeah.” Casey and Red were less crisp but equally calm.
Sounds carried in the mountains. You can prove it to yourself. Yell into the void, and it yells back a dozen times.
Yet, until my encounter with the grouse, we'd never heard the sound of gunshots. Over the next couple of days, we never heard them again.
Where had they gone? Were we being watched? The back of my neck tingled.
Maybe they'd drifted to some faraway place where the game was better. This forest was disturbingly empty of life. Hell, the sky itself seemed empty. Shouldn't the geese be flying by now? Was Canada gone? Our northern neighbor, with its small population and its rich resources, would be an attractive target for the enemy, but what good were those resources if they were contaminated by nuclear fallout?
Had something triggered a doomsday device? If so, we really might be one of the last few remnants of humanity.
The Air Force certainly should have been flying. After a nuclear event, this empty wilderness might be prime real estate. Yet we'd never seen a single aircraft overhead. Which didn't make any sense. The US military had known about the electromagnetic pulse problem for decades. We had plenty of birds hardened against EMP.
Somebody should have been up there checking things out.
The cloudless night skies of endless summer were just as empty. I never spotted a satellite, unless some of the shooting stars we saw were falling satellites. That was more puzzling than the lack of military aircraft. Even after worldwide war, there should have been the occasional satellite gliding slowly through the night. Even if all its electronics were fried, a satellite's body would still glow from the reflected light of the sun in the same way dead planets like Mars glowed.
Had they all, every last one of them, been shot out of orbit?
What madman was that dedicated to the cause of ultimate destruction? There were literally thousands of satellites in the heavens.
Or, at least, there had been thousands.
“We have to get to the bunker,” I said. “There must be other...” Setups? Situations? “There must be other families like ours. Saunderson was involved with an entire network. Somebody on the inside let him know the war was coming. There might have been any number of groups like ours set up around the world. Did he ever mention anything to you girls about that?”
Madison and Casey shook their heads.
Of course, he wouldn't. Imagine how the tabloid press would react if it became widely known that a cabal of billionaires was making plans for breeding the next generation after the end of the world. The best way to keep the secret from spreading was to have a cell system. The girls wouldn't know about the existence or location of any of the other groups. They'd have no idea of, much less any proof of, the size of the conspiracy.
“They wouldn't need to know unless the apocalypse actually arrived.” Red was thinking along the same track I was.
And where did she come from again? The third wheel with the ever-changing story?
Did it even matter?
“There must be information about how to contact the other groups hidden in the bunker,” I said. “After all, our children will need partners from outside the family circle when the time arrives.”
“Now you're making sense,” Madison said. “We've got to get to the bunker anyway. Summer won't last forever. We need to get there before the first snowfall.”
“My man wasn't part of the inner circle.” Red looked angry. “Nobody trusted him.”
“Well. Were they wrong?” Madison asked. “He left you here to die.”
“He went to get help and never came back. That doesn't mean he left me to die. It probably means he got himself killed before he could return.”
I shivered. What's the name for deja vu that isn't quite deja vu? It felt like Red had told me a different version of this story at a different time.
Shake it off. No more doubts. No more denial.
“Bad decision-making can be fatal. In times of war, it usually is.” My tone was probably too harsh, but it was me I was judging. I'd almost done the same thing, and I should have known better. Wandering off to meet your death wasn't a good choice when you had people relying on you.
“We did argue about it, but he didn't think it was such a bad decision.” Red sighed. “He was that type who always thinks he's the smartest guy in the room. And he made it sound so reasonable. Leave the girl behind in a safe place stocked with food and water with locks on the doors and a shotgun on the wall.”
“You split up, sil
ly,” Casey said. “Everybody who watches the movies knows you shouldn't split up.”
“Well, you know. Software guys. They don't really have time to sit down and watch movies.”
Some of my memories were double. I could swear we'd said all these things a time or two before. Maybe that wasn't so unusual in a man who'd suffered a traumatic brain injury. Had the Air Force docs mentioned this possibility? Double vision was a common symptom, easily measured. Hold up two fingers and see four. Double memories were less easy to gauge. People got confused about stuff all the time. Even people who'd never been in an accident, much less two of them.
Red had said something else I hadn't heard. All three girls were looking at me. Expecting me to say something to inspire confidence.
They were counting on me. I couldn't be confused, I had to be clear. “Look, it doesn't matter now what kind of guy he was or what mistakes he made. What's done is done. You're with us now.”
“I know,” she said. “I do know that. And thank you.”
We packed quickly and efficiently for our trip to the bunker. Tools, weapons, medical supplies, water ionizers. I was sorry to leave behind the remaining stocks of Scotch and champagne, but we had our priorities.
Maybe someday we'd be able to come back for the single malt and Kobe steaks.
←↑→
Thanks to the death of our technology, we no longer had access to the global positioning satellites that might, or might not, continue to orbit the earth. Fortunately, Saunderson had loaded the plane with plenty of maps.
He'd feared we might come down too early.
He'd feared a lot of things. Well, he had a lot to fear.
Poor bastard. I shuddered. It was clear to me now where his body went, although I'd never verbalize my suspicions to the girls. Everything became obvious once I put together the lack of gunshots from those hunters and the disappearance of Saunderson's fresh corpse.
They could maintain their silence for so long because fresh meat had fallen down from the sky on top of them before they ever needed to fire a shot.
A gruesome thought. They weren't nice folks. Maybe I should have fired back at them after all.
Sending a silent prayer in the direction of Saunderson's ghost, I studied a couple of the maps he'd left behind. They were almost, but not quite, in agreement with each other. You tend to think every square inch of American wilderness has been mapped by NASA or the Bureau of Land Management or, I don't know, Davy Fucking Crockett, but some of the mountains in our immediate area seemed to have been glossed over.
Including the one where we'd gone down.
“Tell me about your place,” I said to Red. “Is there anything useful in your cabin?”
“Don't think so.” She shrugged. “It was more a secret hideaway from the prying eyes of wifey than a pre-planned bug-out bunker. And anyway I doubt I'd be able to find it again. Once I broke out of the place, I was wandering around for quite a few days.”
Was she telling the truth?
Who the hell even knew?
I thought about the moment I'd first seen her. She hadn't looked much like a girl who'd been exposed to the elements day and night for “quite a few days.”
That creamy skin. That shiny, bouncing hair. She looked fresh from a day at the beauty salon.
Well, maybe she'd packed some grade-A products in her purse. At this point, I had little to gain from poking holes in her story.
The hike down went faster than I thought it would. Inexperienced hikers often move too fast on the downhill slope, so I took point and insisted on slowing the pace to a safer speed. Still, we made excellent time for what amounted to an overgrown deer track.
The dull throb in my arm was easy to ignore. Madison would have been a hell of a doctor if she'd ever decided to take that superior brain to medical school.
You were hurt more badly the first time you made this hike before. The lion's claws...
More of those doubled memories. How had I ever convinced myself I'd wrestled a lion? I pushed the ridiculous image away.
None of us talked much about anything other than our immediate path and which way to turn. Once we went half a mile one way, realized the vegetation was becoming impenetrable, and then backed up to find an easier way.
We didn't talk about what would happen when we found the bunker.
Or what would happen if we never found it.
By mid-afternoon, we reached a horizontal chain between two rotten wooden posts― the end of the current deer track. If not for the chain, it would have run directly into a crossroad which looked as if it had been paved once long ago in a decade long forgotten.
There were no signs. There weren't even posts where the signs might have once been posted. Should there be signs?
I squinted at the map.
“Is this right? Where are we?” Casey's face tipped up toward the mountains around us. The sky seemed smaller here.
“We're fine,” I said.
She looked at me with perfect trust in her open face. The weight of my responsibility hit me once again. What did I know about the care and feeding of pregnant ladies? A wave of protectiveness surged through me.
I touched her hip. “We've already put in a pretty long day, and we've got a nice level spot here. Tell you what. Let's go ahead and camp here for the night. We'll start uphill when we're fresh in the morning.”
There was a rivulet of clear water running down the cut face of the roadway. That would be a convenient natural shower. The girls kicked around for a minute as they debated where to set up. There were hours of daylight left, and I was in the mood to scout around for game.
Madison seemed to read my mind. Uncanny how she did that. “I'm going with you. Casey and Red can handle the setup.”
She was right. We were on the buddy system now. This was real life now, and survival was the name of the game.
Chapter Seven
I moved swiftly and silently up a small game trail, and Madison moved almost as silently behind me. Almost. Two people can never be as quiet as one. My arm throbbed in time to my footfalls, a dull reminder of why she didn't entirely trust me.
She paused, her whole body pointing like a setter.
“No,” I said aloud.
The thrush, startled, took to the air and was gone in an instant.
Madison glared at me. “That was protein. All birds are edible except for a few poisonous species in New Zealand. And I don't care what you think this is. We can all agree it isn't New Zealand.”
“We can definitely agree on that.” I faked a brief chuckle. “Look, I stopped you because we don't need to waste ammunition on a target you can't hit. That bird is too small and too far away for your weapon.”
She looked from the spot where the bird sat and back to me. “All right. Point taken.”
“How much shooting experience do you have anyway?”
“Not that much. I guess he thought I didn't need that much. I mean, there's not that much to it, is there? Point and shoot.”
“That works against large two-legged predators, which was probably Saunderson's main concern on a hike from the plane to the bunker.”
We walked on. The silence of the forest was becoming oppressive. Our voices had scared off the birds, and we hadn't yet encountered any bigger game.
These blue skies and green mountains began to seem sinister. This wilderness should have been teaming with elk, deer, and moose. Something made these game trails. Where had they gone?
Gamma radiation was invisible, the ultimate deception. But if the other big animals had been poisoned by nuclear fallout, how were any of us still alive?
I must have mumbled something of what I was thinking, because Madison answered me. “Could be cattle. Sometimes cattle ranchers lease public land for grazing. There's a lot of controversy about it, but it still goes on.”
“All right. I can eat cow. Except...” I looked around us. We hadn't seen so much as a rabbit dropping on the path, let alone a cow patty. “Where's the beef?”
She sighed. “See, that's why you need somebody to check your work.”
“Oh boy.”
“I'm serious, Brock. Once you get off on these wild flights of fancy, we never know where you're going to land. Be real with me. I know exactly what you're thinking. The vultures are missing, the cicadas are missing, oh, and where are the mosquitoes, although why you'd care about some misplaced mosquitoes...”
“Hey. I'm delighted to misplace the mosquitoes.”
“This is real, Brock. This is no fucking dream.” She put a soft hand on my arm to back me up against a friendly tree. “The world is not your little vision quest.”
I'd earned her mistrust when I wandered off and got myself shot while in search of a reset button for the whole fucking universe. So now I'd have to let her blow off some steam. When she put a hand on either side of me and leaned in, I could smell her expensive tangerine soap. We still hadn't gotten to the bottom of the fancy products Saunderson packed.
He might be a prepper but, by God, he was a Hollywood billionaire prepper.
“You might as well tell me what's on your mind.”
“You know you can't be alone out here. Not just this time. Every time.”
And I also knew she'd said that already. “We all agree about the buddy system, Madison. But you should also agree that I know how to defend myself. Defense is sort of my life's work.”
“I know but...”
These stupid-ass “buts” were my own damn fault. “You doubt me. You think I might hurt myself.”
“I don't think you're suicidal. But if you think you can't die, that you can only be reset, then you'll take crazy chances you don't need to be taking.”
“I realize that now,” I said. “And I'm sorry.”
She pushed her lovely face into my chest. I smelled more tangerine shampoo and the hot, passionate girl underneath. “You're not allowed to get yourself killed. That's all I'm saying, Brock. We need you.”
