The Killing Days

by Ronald Williams

  His sports days were done, the doctor continued. He couldn't overexert himself. It was too risky.

  Jason wiped a slick stream of sweat from his forehead and grimaced. Couldn't overexert himself. Yeah, right. Here he was standing on a ladder in the middle of the night, sweating in the ninety degree heat, trying to twist a rusty bolt out of a twenty-foot sign. And he was managing. Overexert that, doctor whatsyourname, he thought triumphantly.

  Out loud, he said, “Any luck over there?”

  “If these godawful bolts hadn't rusted to hell, we'd have this thing down by now,” Harrison shot back. He was on another ladder, at the other end of the sign, struggling mightily with a socket wrench.

  Over the past few years, Craft General Store had grown into a one-hundred percent, Grade-A 21st century establishment. A bright neon “Open” sign buzzed over the front door, the register was a brand new POS system with touchpad entry, and they stocked all the latest gadgets on the market.

  Twenty percent of their power usage even came from solar, a useless piece of trivia which Harrison never seemed to get tired of telling customers.

  But for all the modern upgrades, the store still had the original wooden sign that their grandfather had painstakingly lettered by hand in the years after the war. The big, blocky letters got a fresh coat of barnyard red once every decade or so, but the sun always seemed to wear at it a little faster each time, like it was punishing it just for trying. That ancient sign hanging across half of the building's front face was the only holdout to those quieter times. Jason always said the charm was what kept customers coming back. Harrison always called him an idiot romantic, but he still said it with a grin, at least.

  Now, both brothers were trying with all their might to wrench the massive sign off the wall of the store, and coming close to failing.

  “Got it!” Harrison whooped, letting an eight-inch bolt drop to the pavement below.

  “Keep your voice down,” Jason shot back. “This might be the one time in our lives we don't want to advertise.”

  “Got it. How're you holding up on your side?”

  “Just...about...there!” With a satisfying sclurch, the bolt finally came free of the wood. Jason's end of the massive sign swung down like a guillotine, smacking the sidewalk with a thud that echoed down the street.

  It was six inches thick and solid wood. None of that flimsy plywood that made up everything these days. Thankfully nobody had been standing under it, because they would have been splattered all the way across the street to Double Donuts if that sign had come down on them.

  Jason heard Harrison grunt as he released the final bolt, and his side of the sign crashed down the same way, then fell heavily against the front wall of the store.

  An hour later, they finally had the sign inside and drilled straight into the brick wall of the store. It covered the window perfectly. Jason sent a silent “thank you” to their old grandfather, wherever he was. Long dead, that was where. Jason leaned back against the newly created wall and shook another tablet into his hand. He washed it down with a sip of bottled water, and glanced up to see Harrison looking down at him.

  “How many of those do you have left?” Harrison asked.

  “Enough,” Jason said shortly. He pocketed the orange bottle and stood up. “How about some dinner?”

  Chapter 7

  For the first time in years, Jason and Harrison ate dinner together. Harrison pulled a small tabletop propane grill out of its box while Jason rummaged through the cans and dry goods that had spilled to the floor. He came up with a boxed biscuit and gravy mix, some canned chicken, and green beans. They sat in fold-out camping chairs and ate off styrofoam plates, and everything was delicious.

  While they ate, they briefly discussed the possibility of going back to their homes, but decided it would be pointless. Harrison lived seven miles away in a small loft in the heart of the city; Jason lived in the opposite direction, on the outskirts in the old family home. Both were too far to reach without a vehicle. Besides the distance, they both agreed that they were probably in the best place, right here in the store. They had food here. Water. Supplies. Craft General didn't sell guns, but there was a 12-gauge shotgun behind the counter to serve as a hold-up deterrent, and they did sell ammo, so there were plenty of shells.

  After the little pot of chicken had been picked clean, Harrison pulled the aluminum foil lid off a chocolate pudding and sat back in his chair with a sigh.

  “You know, I forgot how good you cook,” Harrison said, licking a bit of pudding off a plastic spoon.

  “It does bring back memories,” Jason replied, resting his thick hands on his stomach. “Remember that time dad made...what was it? This was after mom left. Ravioli and microwaveable rice. He mixed it all together in a big pot and called it—”

  “'Craft suprise,'” Harrison said, laughing. “God, he'd boiled it to a mush. I think he'd been drinking at the store since noon. There were still pieces of the plastic bag the rice came in. I shit cellophane that night.”

  “You did not. You're so full of it,” Jason said.

  “Swear, scout's honor. You could see it glitter. Looked like a fairy threw up.”

  “I'm about to throw up, Harrison,” Jason grimaced.

  “So you,” Harrison continued, “You came home from school the next day – you were...you must have been fifteen – and you'd skipped the school bus and walked home, and stopped by the Eagle's on the way home.”

  “Fourteen,” Jason interjected. “Because you were still in eighth grade, on a different bus.”

  “That's right! Yeah, so I've been home for an hour, and you walk in the door with this huge paper bag in your arm and say the dumbest thing...”

  “Tonight's surprise is canceled,” Harrison quoted in a high voice, mimicking his younger self.

  Harrison guffawed. “That was it! A hundred percent. And then you actually cook this creamy alfredo with bits of sausage and a bunch of those tangy leaves...”

  “Basil.”

  “...and I still think that was the best meal I've ever had in my life, Jason. Until tonight, maybe.”

  “Dad didn't like it,” Jason said in a quiet voice.

  “Dad didn't like anything,” Harrison said bitterly. “What the hell did he ever have to offer us? A store drowning in debt that he'd drunk into the ground? It took us ten years just to get back into the black on this place. What did he ever have to offer us?”

  “Yeah...” Jason said, staring into the darkness of the store. Maybe remembering some nights he wanted to forget. “Have you thought about him today? Since, you know...”

  “He's dead, Jason,” Harrison said matter of factly. His voice had no sadness and no triumph. It was just a fact. “If the same thing that happened to us happened at the hospital, his life support clicked off just like one of those cheap plastic flashlights. That means he clicked off just like one of those cheap plastic flashlights. I've thought about it plenty of times today. And you know what? I'm happy for him. He hasn't had a drink in three years, not since his liver disease got the way it was and forced him into the hospital. Maybe he was happy to go.”

  “I just wish I'd been there to see it,” Jason said softly. He was clenching his hands into fists, and his wide forehead gleamed in the yellow candlelight. “Just to watch those final moments and see him realize he'd never be able to fix everything he'd broken.”

  Harrison didn't say anything. He knew their father had for some reason singled out Jason as the target for his seemingly bottomless well of anger. Anger that their mother had left him. Anger that his oldest son was first sickly, then better than he could ever hope to be. He was especially hard on Jason during the years between the bone marrow operation and the onset of his heart problems. None of it had any sense to it, but then, Harrison reasoned, when did self-hatred ever make sense? Because that's what it was: Their father had hated himself and the bitter, impotent alcoholic he'd become. So he took it out on Jason.

  Harrison had learned to love stormy
nights, because that was the only time he couldn't hear his father hit his brother in the next room. And he still lived with the guilt of never trying to stop it.

  A sharp rap on the glass door brought both of them out of the past. Harrison, whose back was to the door, twisted in his chair and saw a dark silhouette outlined against the door.

  Harrison began to stand, but Jason beat him to it. “It's alright,” Jason said. “I'll see who it is.”

  He went up to the door and called out, “What do you want?”

  “Please!” came a thin voice from the other side of the door. “My family needs food. I feel like an idiot,” the man laughed nervously. “We had a grocery list for days – but we never made it out to the store. My daughter's hungry. I just want a little food. I can pay you. I walked all this way. It's...it's crazy out here. People are starting to riot.”

  “What do you mean, they're starting to riot?” Jason asked. He hadn't moved to open the door. Harrison stood up and watched the dark silhouette through the glass.

  “Everything is down. I mean everything. Nobody has food or water or medicine, and they're crazy to get it. I just watched someone get shot at a pharmacy. They're dead. Please...” The man sounded like he was on the verge of tears.

  “Sorry. We can't help you,” Jason said, softly but firmly.

  “Jesus, Jace,” Harrison whispered. “Let's give him something.”

  “What if it's a trick?” Jason whispered back.

  “What if it's not?” Harrison shot back.

  Jason decided. “Okay, fine.” He turned back to the door. “Hold tight out there,” he called to the silhouette. “Give us a minute.”

  Harrison found a plastic bag and loaded it with a dozen soup cans and boxes of crackers, a bag of rice, some bottled water. He brought it to Jason, who gave him a quick look in the candlelight, as if to say “Are you sure about this?”

  Harrison nodded.

  “Okay,” Jason said to the man outside. “Step back a few steps.”

  The man's shadow shrunk on the window pane as he did what Jason said. “I'm back,” he called. “I'm on the street. Thank you.”

  Jason twisted the deadbolt...and the shadow lunged forward, forcing the door inward. Jason tried to push back, but he was off balance. The bag of food fell to the floor and split, spilling cans everywhere. The man outside leaned his shoulder into the door and eased it open an inch, two inches, six inches. Harrison joined his brother at the door and pushed back, but the man had his foot wedged between the door and the jamb, keeping it open.

  “You asshole!” Harrison shouted, leaning into the door with all his weight.

  Out of the dark, a knife blade flashed in through the gap and sliced Harrison's forearm. He cried out but kept pushing. The knife sliced him again, then the tip plunged into his bicep. Harrison wheeled backward, gripping his arm.

  Jason had his back pressed against the door. His face was blotchy and red, and he was panting.

  The door swung open another inch.

  Chapter 8

  Jason was pressing all his bulk against the door, all two hundred and fifteen pounds of him, but still the man outside was gaining ground. The bell above the door was bouncing back and forth, ringing like church bells calling the congregation to their salvation.

  But there was no salvation here. Not if this maniac forced his way inside. Jason saw Harrison holding his arm, and could just make out the thick stream of blood pouring from the puncture wound, staining his light gray Craft General shirt. Jason's heart was skipping beats and sending tingles down his arms, but he kept his back wedged flat against the door, drawing on all his atrophied football skill to hold his ground.

  The door creaked on its hinges as it slid open even farther, and then with a roar, the man outside gave a massive push and sent Jason plunging forward into the store. He rolled up against the stone counter and just lay there gasping.

  The man from outside swung the door open easily and stepped over the threshold.

  He was tall and well built, with dark hair cropped so close he was almost bald. His eyes glinted behind a pair of thin, frameless eyeglasses, which looked almost dainty perched on his thick nose. His lips curled into a twisted smile, accented by a gnarled scar that cut through the center of his upper lip.

  And gripped in his right hand was a long butcher's knife.

  Jason pushed his back up against the counter and tried to stand, but his right arm had gone numb and it collapsed under him, sending him sprawling to the floor. The man twisted his lips into an obscene pucker and lunged toward Jason with the knife. Jason saw it shimmer as it caught the reflection of one of the candles in the store. It was red with Harrison's blood.

  The man let out a snarl as he ran forward, and then the sound died in his throat and he was looking over Jason's head, over the counter. His hands went up in the air.

  “Back up slowly,” Harrison said.

  Jason twisted around and saw his brother standing behind him, the 12-gauge shotgun from below the counter pressed tight against his shoulder. The barrel was aimed directly at the man's face.

  The man took a step backward, away from Jason.

  “Drop the knife,” Harrison said.

  The man smiled, the scar twisting his lip into a “W” shape. He let the knife fall. He took another step backward.

  “Now get out of here and don't come back.”

  “I'll leave,” the man said. His voice was thin and reedy. His eyes were piercing behind the thin glasses. He stepped backward again. “But I'll be back. Y'all can't keep all these goodies to yourselves.” His eyes roamed the store. “I'll be back.”

  Harrison pulled the trigger. The shotgun roared and fired a spray of buckshot into the wall well to the left of the man.

  “Just try and come back,” Harrison said, pumping another shell into the shotgun.

  The man hadn't flinched at the gunshot, and now he reached behind him, found the door handle, and pulled it open. A hot gust of air blew in from the night beyond.

  “Don't get too comfortable, boys.” And with that, he stepped through the doorway and turned away into the darkness. The door wheezed shut on its hydraulic hinge.

  Harrison ran over to lock it, then dropped to his knees beside Jason. He laid the shotgun on the floor.

  “You alright?” he asked, holding out a hand. Jason took it and let Harrison haul him to his feet. His breathing was still shallow, but his heart had stopped fluttering. The numbness in his arm was receding.

  “Thanks,” Jason said.

  Once Jason caught his wind again, they dragged a pallet loaded with shrink-wrapped boxes of canned goods out of the rear storage room and slid it up against the front door. The door was deadbolted, and it had the bulletproof pane, but Jason didn't like the idea of window shoppers dropping by while they were sleeping. Not after that close call.

  Then, they rolled out two sleeping bags and settled down right on the floor. Jason fell asleep almost immediately. It had been a long day, and his heart had clearly exhausted him.

  Harrison, on the other hand, found sleep elusive. He sanitized the cut on his bicep and wrapped it with a bandage, then lay on his back in the dark store, listening to his brother's steady breathing, and thought. He got up and found a pinky-wide slit in the wide sign that let him peer out to the street outside. Eventually, he went back to bed and stared at the ceiling. He lay like that for a long time.

  Chapter 9

  Harrison didn't know what time he finally drifted off to sleep, and when he woke up he experienced a moment of disorientation. The hard floor under his back. The dim, cluttered shop interior. The tiny shafts of dusty sunlight sneaking around the boxes by the front door and through small cracks in the large wooden sign. As the last remnants of sleep fled his tired brain, though, he remembered everything. The power outage, the terrifying plane crash, and worst of all, the intruder the night before.

  Harrison groaned and dropped back to his pillow, then rolled over to look at Jason. Jason's sleeping bag was e
mpty, and Harrison felt a brief surge of panic.

  “Jason?” he shouted, jerking up to a sitting position. God, what if that man had come back in the night? Or more likely, what if Jason had woken up thirsty, gone rummaging for a bottle of water, and had a seizure?

  “Jason!” Harrison leaped to his feet, his foggy morning tiredness completely gone, and began moving through the shop in a crouch, kicking away debris and searching the shadowy lumps of goods for something that resembled his brother's prone body.

  Something heavy thumped against the great wooden sign blocking the front window, followed by a whooping shout that seemed to drift away into the distance.

  Harrison reached the rear of the store without finding Jason. He wheeled and ran toward the swinging door that led into the back room...and bumped headlong into his brother.

  “What are you yelling about?” Jason asked, steadying himself. “You scared the hell out of me.”

  “I couldn't find...” Harrison started. “You weren't...” he gestured toward the sleeping bags, already feeling like an idiot. What had he been worried about, exactly? Jason could take care of himself. He had his medication. Truth be told, as soon as he'd seen that empty sleeping bag he'd emotionally flashed back in time to when they were kids, when Jason couldn't take care of himself, because he was too sick.

  But that was twenty-five years in the past. Jason didn't need him like that anymore. And yet...looking at Jason's face now, Harrison realized something was wrong.

  “Come back here. You better look at this.” Jason turned back through the swinging door and walked into the storage bay. Harrison followed, blinking as his eyes adjusted. The square ceiling hatch that led to the roof was wide open, letting sunlight pour into the dark room. Jason had also spread several fat candles around on the cement floor.

  The storage bay was filled mostly with stacks of boxes on pallets just like the one they'd wedged against the front door. Mostly shop inventory, nondescript corrugated boxes mummified in shrink wrap.