by Jones, K. J.
Jayce sat in the near-lotus position on the ground.
“Tell me you didn’t do this,” Phebe yelled at him. Her voice rough and gravely from the smoke inhalation.
His eyes remained closed. Phebe charged at him, her adrenaline and heartbeat too high to feel the cold in the air. Grabbing Jayce by the shirt collar, she yanked him up.
“Tell me you didn’t do this!”
“We will all burn in the hellfires of damnation.”
Phebe slapped Jayce hard across the face.
“You endangered us. You took our shelter.”
She slapped him hard several more times until his face bled. He merely flinched, taking her abuse.
“You fucked up son of a bitch!”
They evacuated the kitchen.
“Ain’t there another garden hose?” Chris searched.
“Here.” Pez handed the nozzle to Tyler, who ran it to Chris.
Chris dragged the hose into the mudroom, and Tyler ran back and turned it on.
“The cellar.” Tyler ran to the outside doors.
“Let’s help,” said Peter. “Not you, Phebe.”
She had Jayce, who resumed sitting in that position and meditating. A craving to hit him more, she resisted.
“Help me move the supplies away from the house,” Phebe said. “Jayce, get the fuck on your feet and help or I swear to God, I will –”
“How dare you say His name?” Jayce screeched. “You are a non-believer.”
“You’re gonna meet your God real goddamn soon if you do not help us.”
“Get the fuck up.” Emily stepped to Jayce’s other side. “Help us or we will make you wish you were dead.”
“Two non-believers.”
Emily’s turn to lose it. She punched him in the back of the head. “Get the fuck up,” she screamed. “Get up!”
Finally, Jayce relented and helped them pull all the supplies away from the burning house. They gathered everything together on the dry barn floor.
The flames devoured the house. Bright orange rose up through the roof. Crashing from within as things fell from the destabilizing structure.
The guys had gotten a lot of the food out of the cellar before the ceiling above their heads became questionable and they had to evacuate. Vomiting they coughed so hard.
“I knew it was too good to last,” said Peter, watching the house burn down.
Brandon glared at Jayce. “What the fuck, man? You set this fire?” More meditative state. “No. You fucking talk.” Brandon grabbed the teenager and forced him onto his feet. He began to shake him. “Why? Why did you try to kill us?”
“You won’t want to hear the answer,” said Emily, sitting on an overturned barrel. “We’re all disbelievers and shit.”
“Answer for what you did, Jayce!” Brandon punched Jayce in the stomach. “Answer me!” Another punch.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Matt. “Stop it, Brandon.”
“No!”
Another punch. The kid was on his knees. Blood coming from his mouth. Brandon moved to kick him when Matt forced him back.
“Stop it. That won’t help.”
“He tried to kill us!”
“He’s gone insane.”
Brandon backed away from Matt, hands up to show he was not going to do anything more.
“So … what? Do we just deal with an insane kid who tried to kill us? He could try again.”
“He’s one of us. We take care of our own.”
“Are you all on board with that?” Brandon looked to Peter, Chris, and Pez.
Pez shrugged. “I’m not going against a teenager who just lost his family.”
“Yeah,” said Chris. “He sixteen, Pell. I ain’t doing that.”
Peter, instead, changed the topic. “Did we get all our gear out?” He squatted down at the pile, sucking air for a second from the bad leg, and sifted through what they had. His face streaked black with soot from the cellar.
Phebe knelt down to help him. “Here’s our rucks. Should we divide up our lawn clothes or shove in whatever we find?”
“Try to separate. It’ll be a pain in the ass when we try to find anything later. Oh, my cane.”
“Thinking of you, Irishman.”
“Thank you, hotshot. You’re a good apocalypse wifey.”
“Try my best.”
Emily and Tyler bent down to help.
“Any chance for any toothbrushes?” Emily asked. “Toothpaste, at least? I got some morning nasty going on.”
“I didn’t hit the bathroom at all,” Phebe responded. “Shit. Sorry.”
“Emily,” Brandon said in a strident voice. “You’re just gonna ignore what he did?”
She stopped sifting and sighed. “Brandon, I am not going to leave behind a kid. Okay? I gotta live with myself. And he’s ours, our people, our family. We take care of our own.”
Tyler watched Jayce, pain in his hazel green eyes. “Why, Jay? Why’d you do this to us?”
Jayce remained in composure as if nothing happened around him. He bled from the nose and an eye swelled. The punches to his stomach produced blood in his mouth. Yet, he behaved as if he had no injuries.
“Jay, brother, please, talk to me,” Tyler pleaded.
Finally, Jayce opened his eyes and looked at his friend. “We are better off dead.”
They all stopped and stared at him.
“We will not win. Evil is taking over the world again. We have become barbarians. The only way to cleanse us is for us to burn now, so we won’t burn for eternity.”
“Fucking awesome.” Brandon kicked at a lump of dirt.
The house fire gave them plenty of light and heat all the way over to the barn entrance where they had gathered.
“You thought you were helping us?” Tyler asked.
“It is the only way.”
“Did God tell him that?” Brandon snidely asked. “Is he hearing voices now too?”
“Are you hearing voices?” Emily asked in a calm voice.
Jayce shook his head. “I wish I heard the voice of God.”
Phebe shrugged. “At least he’s not schizophrenic. It can present at this age.”
“It’s trauma,” said Matt. “Like Eric and his ghosts.”
“It’s guilt,” said Peter.
“Survivor’s guilt?” asked Emily.
“Worse. A brother is supposed to protect his little sister.”
“Oh,” said Matt. “Shit. Just like Eric.”
Jayce, seeming not to be listening, surprised them when he said, “Nia was my responsibility. I failed her. And my mother.”
Peter squatted in front of Jayce, a hiss of pain from the leg but he pushed forward. “Jay, it was outside of your control. But think of it this way, they are in Heaven now, only bothered by worrying about you. Maybe those who have gone are the lucky ones, and it’s really you who are unlucky.”
“Sul,” Matt said with disapproval.
“What? I’m not gonna sugar-coat our lives to him.”
“Why would Jesus do this to us?” Jayce’s eyes filled with pain as his gaze met Peter’s.
Peter shrugged. “We don’t understand how things work.”
“They were good. What if Nia’s witch book – if she doesn’t go to Heaven?”
“Oh, I don’t think God’s that picky with kids.”
“It was a Devil book.”
“No. Listen, I dated a Wiccan. It’s nature and shit. Female empowerment. Nothing about the Devil in it.”
“But witchcraft is evil. ‘Thou shall not suffer a witch to live.’” Jayce quoted a line in the New King James Bible.
“Well, they aren’t those witches,” said Peter. “You know how people are nowadays. Doing all kinds of explorations. Wicca’s a New Age thing. Harmless. Not the olden days’ witches.”
Peter looked over at Phebe in the romantic lighting of a house fire. They had joked about being burned at the stake by Southern Baptists. Now, it felt different, nowhere near as funny, since Jayce quoted something that
ordered the murder of a lot of people.
“Maybe,” Peter said, “Matt, you want to talk to him as a Christian?”
“Yeah. I think we got some faith issues going on.”
“Matt, our future preacher,” joked Chris.
“Let’s sit over here, Jayce.”
The kid stood and followed Matt into the barn without hesitation.
Brandon looked furious. “We just gonna forgive and forget. He could have killed us. But we’re gonna treat this like it’s a therapy breakthrough?”
“Go jog or beat up a wall,” said Peter.
“Me?”
“You gotta vent this anger shit. You’re justified, but you gotta get it gone.”
“Well, thanks for at least saying I am justified in my feelings.”
Peter slightly smirked. Montana was growing snarkier with each day.
Emily said, “Yeah, Bran, gotta drop it.”
“He could have killed you.”
“But he didn’t, honey. I’m right here, alive and reeking of smoke. God, my lungs feel crappy.”
“This smell will be up our noses for a while,” said Phebe, fiddling with her nose.
“We have to walk,” said Brandon. “Head to Carlisle now. We have no choice now. We didn’t want to do that. He forced our hand. We got nowhere to live.”
“Then we walk, Bran,” said Emily. “Maybe it was God making the decision.”
“Oh, we’re gonna go there now? Let’s make a religious cult. They are always so helpful. Like the one on the island.” He kicked at something on the ground.
No one blamed Brandon for his feelings. He had just lost his unborn, and now the house. Unable to provide for the woman he loved; at every turn, everything ripped away from him, out of his control. They knew Brandon would return to his rational mind and regret anything about Jayce if they let him do anything. They protected not only Jayce but Brandon from himself.
From inside the barn, they heard Jayce weeping. A glance in, Matt held him.
“Too goddamn much for a kid,” said the man who lost his brother, followed by his grandfather. Peter had been but a year older than Jayce. “Too goddamn much.” The idea of losing everyone, his entire family nearly all at once, and at that age, Peter didn’t wonder why the kid went around the bend.
Peter wished he could do something for Jayce, but his own ways had never been functional or healthy. If they were in civilization, he’d probably get him drunk or high to do his version of coping. With that thought, he determined Matt would be the best one for Jayce.
Pez went into the barn, too, to help. Peter remembered Pez was a devout Catholic, a believer. Though he showed to be open-minded about other things, his core was a believer. Since Jayce’s pain went right to his religion, two religious guys were much better than alcohol and drugs.
Tyler kept glancing into the barn as if he wanted to help his friend, his brother. Peter thought about how that kid was cut from the same cloth as himself. Full steam into the Darkside. No wonder he liked him so much. But he didn’t want Tyler to continue on that path. More reason Peter had to be a good example and role model for the kid. His new fatherly duty.
Matt came out to collect his medical bag, which he had fortunately thrown out a door or window. He returned to the barn to treat Jayce’s wounds.
Inside the barn, Matt crunched an ice pack to activate it. “Put this on your cheek and eye.”
“What will happen to these chickens and cats?” Jayce asked. “They are innocents. Animals are innocent of sin.”
Pez’s dark brows shot up. “Huh. Never thought of that.”
The Marine looked around at all the creatures watching them from their respective hiding or sleeping places. The chickens made their nests out of hay. One had made a nest out of a shirt on a chair. The rooster perched on the side of a stall half-door. Cats lounged on rafters above, watching the activity below in between looking up at the pigeon nests. None of the barn residents slept. Every now and again, a mouse scurried along the base of a wall. The cats visually followed them, but too distrustful of the humans to go down and hunt their breakfast.
“The cats will be fine,” said Matt. “They were barely domesticated anyway. There’s plenty of food for them and this barn gives them shelter. They’re breed like crazy and this whole land will have feral cats.”
“The chickens won’t survive?”
“Don’t know. Sometimes, Jayce, domestic livestock can revert back to their wild ways and survive. It has happened with horses. You’d never think it, seeing as how fragile they can be. But it has happened several times. The horses Native Americans had, they came from Spanish colonial horses that escaped. There were wild horses on the Sea Islands near us in Wilmington. They were really small, cos the terrain couldn’t provide them much nutrient, being mostly beach grass.”
“You love horses?”
“I do.”
“That’s nice. We never had pets except for goldfish once.”
“That’s too bad. We had tons of pets. Dogs, cats, all kinds. One of my sisters had a pet raccoon.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. She rescued it as a baby and raised it. Followed her around like it was a dog. Another one of my sisters always wanted a pet fox. But we never found an abandoned baby.”
“Abandoned? Their mothers left them?”
“No, their mothers usually died for some reason.”
A flash of pain in the kid’s dark brown eyes. Maybe he related to the orphaned raccoon. “Why is life so cruel?”
The pain of someone so young twisted the stomachs of the men.
“Well, son,” Matt said. “That’s been a question man has asked for centuries.”
“Anyone have an answer?”
“A lot of theories. I basically believe we understand once we die. But we’re not allowed to know before then. We’re supposed to accomplish things here and if we had too much knowledge, we couldn’t do it.”
“Accomplish what?”
“We know it when we die and go to God. We just have to trust there’s greater wisdom than our own.”
Jayce sighed with a heavy heart. Matt looked at Pez, whose face showed sympathy with a deep frown and furrowed brow.
Day 8
Chapter One
1.
Dawn broke, causing the world to turn gray in the faint light. They had their rucksacks and daypacks ready with what they had. Black garbage bags to compensate for the lack of more packs. The food caused a lot of weight. Who knew what they’d face down the road and if they could find high protein food?
The stone walls and chimneys remained of the house, among a mass of twisted black burnt lumber. Some areas still smoldered. Crackling of spots told of little fires that remained, hidden from sight.
They moved out in silence, feeling like homeless refugees again.
“I am sorry,” Jayce broke the quiet. “I am sorry for what I did. Please forgive me.”
“Give some time for that,” Brandon said.
He kept his distance from Jayce. As he walked, he kept his head down, hiding his soot-covered frown.
“I pray we won’t die because of what I did.”
Brandon rolled his eyes. “Maybe enough pr—”
“Bran,” Emily cut him off.
Brandon turned to see her face, she scowled at him to shut up. He sighed and quickened his pace to take point.
“Hey,” said Chris. “You ain’t the first to try to kill us, kid. Probably won’t be the last.”
Peter laughed. “At least this time it was within the family.”
“We do lack trying to kill each other, don’t we?”
“We are amazing that way.”
They fell into silence. Their footfalls and bird squawks the only noises. A murder of crows raided a field. They had an ominous appearance any day of the week.
“I’m assuming,” said Phebe, “the side streets were not good.”
“No,” answered Pez. “A lot of wrecks and crazy shit. No map to tell where the
y are going. Why the hell doesn’t anybody have paper maps?”
Matt responded, “GPS, man.”
“You’d think a bunch of country bumpkins wouldn’t be into phone maps.”
“They lived here their whole lives. They didn’t need maps of any kind.”
“Do gas stations still have paper maps?” Pez looked around them for an answer.
“I haven’t noticed,” said Matt.
“If we see one that’s not burned down, we should check. Maybe we can still use a side street with a car. Oh, I’d love a car.”
“You and me both,” said Phebe.
Worried glances at her and her belly, but no one said anything.
They had looted the barn of anything they could use as extra weapons and tools for survival. Peter had a reaper sickle sticking out of his pack. Not as big as the one the Grim Reaper carried, but enough for him to use. The stick end, he could use as well. He had trained the civilians to use broomsticks as weapons. Phebe, Emily, and Tyler carried broom and mophandles with them. Jayce, though, Peter had not trained. Angela went berserk anytime anyone tried to do too much training of her children.
Their primary weapons were the suicide farmer’s shotguns. Pez still had his SASS, but it had no bullets. He carried it by the strap, hanging beside his rucksack on which shopping bags of food dangled.
Walking and walking. Muscles, feet, and joints ached. Rarely speaking. They munched on food and sipped water as they walked, wanting to get as far as they could without stopping for anything but potty breaks. Farmland to both sides. Treelines marking separate fields or property lines. They didn’t see houses.
It grew near sunset. An hour and it would be dark.
“We gotta find a place for the night,” said Peter.
He was limping again but he seemed to ignore it. Since the temp wasn’t as cold as before, his leg behaved better.
Pez jumped up on a hatchback in a sudden burst of activity. He lifted his rifle and scanned through the scope. It did not look promising since he kept scanning. Almost to an entire circle, he finally stopped.
“Got one. About two miles southeast.”
“Let’s head to it,” said Peter.
“Think we need to go over the highway barricade. The next ramp is miles north.”
