by Dave Bowman
“We’ll never make it,” Naomi said breathlessly as she fell behind. “We’re going to die out here!”
Jack turned around and jogged backward to face her.
“You need to take a breath,” he told her. “Panicking won’t help us right now.”
Naomi took a few deep breaths, trying to calm down her breathing a bit. She nodded, and Jack turned around to run ahead.
They rounded the corner onto a new street, but they were disappointed to see more of the same. Even if someone would let them into their home, there wouldn’t be enough protection from the radiation.
Jack wiped his brow as he ran.
He estimated about eleven minutes had passed, which meant they had only nine minutes to take cover. Maybe less if the wind pattern wasn’t in their favor.
And they still didn’t have shelter.
Time was running out.
18
Dan paced back and forth across the floor of his room.
He had just said goodnight to Annie and Charlotte. He listened as they settled into bed in the library next door.
Soon, he could hear their breathing slow down and deepen. They were asleep.
Annie’s face seared a permanent image in his mind’s eye.
But it wasn’t simply her face that was hunting him. It was a particular look.
When Charlotte had mentioned Annie’s plans to go to her husband’s ranch, Annie had twisted her face up in an expression of disapproval.
It had been such a fleeting moment, but Dan had caught it. Annie had been upset that Charlotte mentioned Loretta.
Annie had tried to cover it up, to pretend she hadn’t been upset.
But Dan was too fast for her. He had seen her reaction.
He knew the inner workings of her mind.
People were always underestimating Dan’s intelligence. They thought they could hide things from him. But Dan always figured it out. And Dan was already onto Annie.
Annie thought Dan was a freak.
She didn’t trust him.
And it wasn’t just that one moment before he had left the room. He had seen that look on Annie’s face before.
That same expression women had given him over and over again. A look of disgust. Of rejection.
It was the same look the accountant, Julia, had shot him that afternoon in the parking lot. She, too, had rejected him.
Now, Annie was just another person who was rejecting him. She hadn’t even wanted to get in his car when he first offered them a ride.
And after all he had done for them. All his generosity. He had opened up his house to them, given them shelter and fed them.
And now Annie didn’t want him knowing about her plans to travel?
White-hot fury enveloped him. He clenched his fists at his side and gritted his teeth. A low, deep guttural sound emerged from his mouth, surprising even himself.
Dan had reached his breaking point.
Dan was sick and tired of people thinking they were too good for him. Avoiding him. Talking about him behind his back. Ridiculing him. Especially women.
Well, he didn’t have to take it anymore. He wasn’t going to allow such disrespect anymore. Certainly not in his own house.
He had always played by the rules. Or at least, he had stayed within the confines of the rules – and then searched for a loophole.
In his professional life, he had presented a good face. He had worn nice suits. He had always driven fancy cars. People got out of the way of a guy like that.
Occasionally, someone would stand in his way. But Dan always found a method of fixing them. Of moving them out of his way.
And he could always do it by making it look like he followed the rules. He always covered his tracks.
But now, everything had changed.
Now, he didn’t have to play by the rules anymore.
Now, there were no consequences he would have to face.
Maybe the attacks had been a good thing after all. Maybe this new world would set him free.
He could do whatever he wanted. Take whatever he wanted.
And what he most wanted was to teach Annie a lesson.
But it wouldn’t be right away. No, he didn’t want to rush things. It was more fun to draw it out.
The next day, Dan joined the two women in the library for breakfast.
Annie tried to be nice to him, but it was too late. The damage was already done, as far as Dan was concerned.
She had hurt him, and in the same way that so many others had hurt him with their disapproving looks and cruel rejection.
His coworker Julia’s wary, disgusted look from the previous day flashed through his mind briefly.
But Dan never let on what he was thinking. He was as gracious and charming as ever to Annie.
He was a better actor then she was.
It had been about thirty-six hours since he had taken his anti-psychotic medication. But he was glad to be free of its suffocating restraint. He was thinking more clearly without the drug. His mind was more swift, more cunning.
That silly psychiatrist had never understood him anyway. Dan was too smart for him. The shrink was just another nobody who couldn’t understand true genius when it was right in front of them.
Now it was Dan’s time to really shine. He had broken free of the medication’s hold on him.
And now, after society had collapsed, he had broken free of the rules and laws made by people dumber and more inferior than he.
Charlotte still suspected nothing. Sweet, trusting, naive Charlotte.
Dan found pleasure in interacting with her the most. She was simpler than Annie. Pure.
Charlotte was nothing like his mother.
Dan could still remember the first time his mother gave him that look.
He was ten years old. His mother had walked into the backyard, calling him inside for dinner.
And then, she had frozen in her tracks, with that look on her face.
Her eyes lingered on the limp, lifeless dog at Dan’s feet. Then slowly, she moved her gaze up to Dan.
And she had that expression of disgust on her face.
Seeing her look at him like that filled him with panic. He began to explain frantically. It was just a street dog. It didn’t belong to anyone. No one would miss it. Dan had just been playing. It was just fun.
It wasn’t Dan’s fault that the dog was so weak and had died in his hands.
But still, his mother stared at him with those shocked, disgusted eyes.
She thought he was a monster.
At dinner, she said nothing. No one ever said anything about the incident. But she never treated him quite the same.
The next week, Dan was taken to a therapist. The first in a long line of shrinks who were nothing but a waste of Dan’s time.
From time to time, Dan would see that look on his mother’s face again.
Like when Dan destroyed his brother Bradley’s art project that had won first prize in a contest. But it hadn’t been Dan’s fault. Everyone was raving about how talented Bradley was. What did they expect? That Dan would be content to just sit in his brother’s shadow?
His parents always took his brother’s side. It didn’t matter what Dan did. He could never compete with Bradley.
Years later, when Bradley was engaged, Dan could hardly stand it. The wedding was all anyone could talk about. His parents raved about Bradley’s fiancée, especially his mother. Mother spent all her time helping to plan the wedding.
His mother had called Dan a month before the ceremony.
“Dan,” she had begun timidly. “You’re not going to…”
Her voice had trailed off.
“Spit it out, Mother.”
“You’re not going to do anything unseemly at the wedding, are you, Dan?”
Dan’s blood had been boiling. His own mother suspected him of wanting to sabotage the wedding.
But then, that was just like her. She had always been cold and cruel. He learned that lesson the first time she�
��d looked at him like he was a monster.
Dan promised his mother he would behave. And he fully intended to.
But he couldn’t help it that he felt compelled to start drinking at ten o’clock the morning of the wedding.
After all, he couldn’t handle the stress of the event. Once again, Bradley was in the spotlight. It brought back all the painful feelings he had lived through in his childhood.
By the afternoon, he was drunk. Sometime during the reception, he blacked out. So he didn’t have the best recollection of what had happened.
He only had the lies his family told him later.
They had made up a wild story of Dan’s exploits that day. And they had all confronted him while he was still hungover. Everyone – his mother, his father, Bradley, his sister-in-law – everyone pointing their fingers and accusing him.
“How could you do this to me?” Bradley demanded, pounding his fist on the table.
His sister-in-law, Valerie, was sobbing. “He ruined everything! After all of the planning. It all went up in flames!”
Dan rolled his eyes. It couldn’t have been that bad.
But they had a stack of lies they told about him.
They said he had laughed loudly during the vows. That he had sighed and yawned during the ceremony. And that at the reception, he had shouted obscenities at the best man and the maid of honor during the toasts.
And the biggest fabrication of all – that he had groped, and then vomited on, one of the bridesmaids.
He had listened to their accusations while reeling from his pounding headache. He looked from one of them to the other as they scowled at him.
And then he had started laughing.
Howling uproariously. He couldn’t help it. The whole thing was comical. His family had been against him his whole life, and now they made up some wild story about his behavior at Bradley’s wedding.
Sure, he had gotten drunk. But it wasn’t like Dan to attack people and shout insults publicly. He knew they were lying.
So he laughed. He looked at their twisted up faces and he cackled. The whole thing was so ridiculous.
Bradley’s eyebrows came together like an angry cartoon character. Apparently he didn’t like Dan’s laughter.
“See? You see?” Bradley said to his mother. “He thinks this is funny. I told you we never should have invited him.”
Dan just kept laughing.
Bradley scowled at his brother. Then he called him the name that hurt most. The name that Bradley had always called Dan when they were growing up.
“You’re a psycho!” Bradley roared at Dan’s face.
Dan stopped laughing.
That word. He hated that word.
Dan’s family walked out shortly after that, leaving Dan alone in his apartment.
He had never seen his brother again after that.
But Dan had gotten the last laugh.
The house that his parents had filled with the art and collectibles they loved, the vehicles his father had collected – Dan got all of it.
It had all been willed to Bradley, of course. Even growing up, their father had often pointed out some object or other and lovingly told Bradley that one day it would be his. He had never done that with Dan.
Bradley had grown up thinking he would inherit it all. So it gave Dan the greatest pleasure to prevent that from happening.
Bradley had taken Dan to court, of course. But Bradley hadn’t counted on the judge being a close professional ally to Dan.
So Dan had taken over the house and everything in it. The site of so much injustice, the place where Dan had been so mistreated growing up. It gave Dan a sense of righting a wrong when he moved in.
Now it was all his. He had ownership of it.
In this house, Dan would get his due. Everything that was wrong, he’d make right again.
Here, if nowhere else, justice would be served.
He would get his revenge on all the people who had rejected him. All the people who had called him a psycho, or avoided him, or thought they were better than him.
All the women who had looked at him with scorn and disgust.
He would start with Annie and Charlotte.
He decided to include Charlotte in his plans despite her innocence.
Because, well, why not? It was more fun.
It was too easy. She was just there, looking at him innocently. Just like that dog when he was ten years old.
After that first night in the house, he spent the next day doing what he did best: playing the game. He never let on what his plans were.
He agreed with them that they would spend one more night in his house, and then he would take them home, safe and sound. He left them once again in the library that second night.
Tomorrow, he would act.
He was going to finally serve justice.
Annie and Charlotte would have to die.
19
Once, in a world that seemed so far away, at his desk at work, Jack had read about the effects of radiation poisoning.
First, there would be nausea and dizziness, headaches and vomiting.
Then, after a few days, those symptoms would fade away.
It might seem like everything was okay, like you were safe.
But maybe a week or two later, your hair would start to fall out. Your teeth would turn black and fall from your mouth, one by one.
You might get a fever. Seizures might develop. Bleeding under the skin.
Then the delirium would begin. The neurological symptoms.
A simple infection might take you over, your immune system too weak to fight it off.
Or maybe your intestines would just stop working.
Either way, it’s just a matter of time before you’re dead.
And as Jack raced through the neighborhood somewhere in East LA, it was just a matter of time before that process would begin for him.
Based on pure estimation, he figured it had been thirteen minutes since the explosion.
That meant he, Brent, and Naomi had only seven minutes to find shelter.
And that was if he had remembered correctly about the timing of the fallout.
After all, maybe it was only fifteen minutes, not twenty.
If so, they had two minutes remaining.
Who knew – maybe invisible particles full of deadly radiation were already falling on their skin. Maybe they were already breathing those particles in, where the radiation would begin to kill them from the inside out.
Jack was sprinting down another block, his hands securing the straps of the backpack he wore. Naomi and Brent were behind, pushing themselves to keep up.
He was approaching an intersection. So far, he had only seen ramshackle little houses with all the windows shattered. His eyes searched for anything they could fashion a makeshift shelter out of. But there was nothing.
Even one of the houses with open window frames would have been better than nothing. But every house that Naomi had tried – she had knocked on several more doors in a fit of desperation – was full of people. People that didn’t take kindly to strangers taking refuge in their houses.
There had to be something on this next street. If not, Jack didn’t know what he would do.
He came to the end of the block, slowing just a bit to look down one end of the cross street, then the other.
And then he saw it.
An abandoned house.
Weeds grew tall in the litter-strewn yard. Graffiti was scrawled on the walls.
And best of all, there was plywood covering each window.
“This way!” Jack shouted over his shoulder to Brent and Naomi.
Jack full-out sprinted toward the house in a final push of speed and endurance.
The front door was boarded up and padlocked. He kept running around to the back.
There’s gotta be a back door. There’s gotta be a way we can get in there fast.
Jack rounded the corner, tearing through the tall weeds. The back door was not boarded up,
and to his relief, it was unlocked.
He removed the gun from his waistband and held it up as he walked inside the dark house, waiting just a moment for his eyes to adjust to the low light. He walked from room to room.
It was empty.
They had finally found a shelter.
Jack felt like he could finally breathe after that panic-fueled race through the streets. Standing in the quiet room, he took a couple of breaths. Maybe they’d be all right after all.
He met Naomi and Brent, who came running up breathlessly, at the back door.
“It’s clear,” he said. “Hurry, get inside.”
“Thank goodness,” Naomi panted as she followed Brent through the door.
Once they were inside the safety of the house, Naomi and Brent doubled over with hands on knees to catch their breath.
Jack closed the door shut. He realized that it had been unlocked because the lock was busted. He found a heavy rock in the corner and pushed it against the door to give them at least a little security. The rock had probably been left by squatters before them for the same purpose.
Jack took a closer look around the dark house. It appeared to have been empty for some time. The air was heavy and stale, smelling faintly of mold and rot.
“Looks like someone’s been here before us,” Naomi said, looking at the needles and syringes scattered among the garbage on the floor.
“Junkies must have used this as their hideout,” Brent said.
“Or their home,” Jack added. “Let’s hope they don’t return today.”
The house was empty of furniture, save for a broken-down stool or two. The back room they had entered had at one time been the kitchen. There were no windows in that room, but the door wasn’t sealed up well.
“Let’s get out of this room,” Jack said. “I don’t think that door provides enough protection from the fallout.”
Jack moved on to look at the windows in the other rooms. The first bedroom was sealed up pretty well.
“You two can rest here,” Jack said. “This might be the best place in the house.”
There was hardly any light in the room, but they could still make out the graffiti on the walls.
Naomi kicked some garbage on the floor off to the side, clearing a place to drop the bag of food and water she had been carrying. Brent and Jack set their bags down next to hers.
